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Thirteen citizens of the Dominican Republic were Responsible for from 400 grandparents In the United States, out of 5 million dollars by placing by phone as their grandchildren who need help – sometimes targeting the same and still victims – announced the federal prosecutors on Tuesday.
The grandparents of Massachusetts, California, New York, Florida and Maryland received calls from people saying that they were their little child and that it was in a car accident or arrested or was in the middle of another emergency, said Leah Foley, American lawyer for the Massachusetts district.
Their objective, said Foley, was to deceive the elderly to give the savings of their lives to help their loved one. In many cases, Foley said that the defendants have called the panicated victims “again and again”, losing another emergency to put pressure for more money.
“These scams are not only financially devastating, they are emotionally traumatized,” said Foley on Tuesday at a press conference in Boston. “Many victims have not only lost their economies, but their feeling of security, judgment and confidence in the world around them.”
Prosecutors said the defendants headed a sophisticated criminal company of the Call Centers organized in the Dominican Republic. They hired people who were talking about English to pretend to be grandchildren and lawyers as well as others in the United States to recover money from the victims, said Foley.
The average age of the victims was 84, and at least 50 of them were in the Massachusetts, she said.
In some cases, fraudsters knew the name of the grand-child, said Foley. In other cases, the prosecutors said they had followed a vague script, identifying themselves as “your older grandson”.
The accused are all citizens of the Dominican Republic. Nine are in detention, while four – from New York, New Jersey and Florida – are still at stake, prosecutors said.
Most of them are faced with a conspiracy to make costs of fraud by mail and fraud by wire, which is liable to a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, and an accusation of conspiracy in terms of money laundering, which is also liable to a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
The fraud regime is not uncommon. In March, the authorities billed 25 Canadian suspects With American seniors at bilking out of $ 21 million in a similar grandparent scam.
Ted Docks, the Special Agent in charge of the FBI Boston field office, said that criminals abroad “do this in epidemic levels”.
“What the accused did by targeting our elders was calculated, in a cold and cruel heart,” he said. “No grandparent should never wonder if the next call they receive is a cry of help or a trap.”
