They thought they’d won Publisher’s Clearing House millions. Instead, they got scammed.
A group of swindlers managed to bilk more than $400,000 out of elderly victims by convincing them they’d won millions in the famed sweepstakes.
There were no oversized checks; no knocks at the door revealing smiling strangers with handfuls of balloons.
And yet, authorities say, a trio of swindlers still managed to bilk more than $400,000 out of elderly victims by convincing them they’d won millions in Publisher’s Clearing House famed sweepstakes.
Federal prosecutors accused Jowayne C. Godfrey, 24, of Margate, Fla.; Vinmar Y.A. Mitchell, 25, of Roosevelt, N.Y.; and Ariel S. Bagalue, 31, of Hyde Park, Mass., of working with others to scam marks across the country by telling them they needed to send cash to cover taxes and fees before they could collect their fictitious winnings.
In some cases, duped retirees forked over much more. One woman — an 89-year-old from Glenolden — added the name of one of the fraudsters to the deed of her house, investigators said, after he told her it was necessary before PCH could cut her a check.
“The scammers … preyed on their elderly victims’ trust,” prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Philadelphia this week, “and persuaded their victims to deplete their life savings and go into debt to pay the PCH taxes and fees, which they stole for themselves.”
The alleged fraud is just the latest iteration of a series of lottery and sweepstakes scams that authorities say originated in Jamaica and have become big business in the island nation.
Often working with accomplices living in the U.S. and targeting elderly U.S. citizens, teleswindlers typically contact victims via calls or text and have reportedly become hostile if their marks resist demands for cash.
But as investigators describe it, the version of that fraud carried out by Godfrey, Mitchell and Bagalue ranks among one of the most successful — and most brazen.
The Glenolden victim, whom prosecutors did not identify in court filings, said the man who called her in September 2021 told her she’d won a multimillion PCH prize plus a Mercedes Benz. Eager to collect, prosecutors say, she sent more than $10,000 to bank accounts controlled by Bagalue over the next several days.
When the prize money still hadn’t come, they upped their demands. At the request of the scammers, she opened cell phone plans and bought new iPhones worth $3,000 to send to the fraudsters — the cost of which they assured her would be applied to the tax debts she owed before she could collect the big prize.
Feeling emboldened, they made their demand to be added to her house deed a month after first establishing contact.
Typically, the group contacted their marks via unsolicited phone calls and had them send cash or checks in relatively small sums directly to their accounts. Prosecutors say Godfrey, Mitchell, and Bagalue withdrew the money for themselves and sent much more to various accounts in Jamaica.
But at least one of the marks they allegedly targeted was duped into helping them launder their illicit proceeds for them.
According to court filings, a PCH impostor contacted that 68-year-old woman from South Carolina in November 2021 and kept her on the hook until earlier this year, promising her prize money was coming if she could satisfy her financial obligations.
But the fraudsters offered to help. Prosecutors say they had other victims across the country mail the supposed taxes on their prize money directly to the 68-year-old.
They told her the cash — which in one case arrived wrapped in a towel and tape and stuffed in a Betty Crocker cake mix box — was an advance on her winnings that she could apply to what she owed if she mailed it to another address.
In truth, prosecutors say, Godfrey, Mitchell and Bagalue were using her as a pass-through should anyone question the source of the funds coming to them.
In all, the trio stands accused of conspiring to laundering funds from four victims and faces up to 20 years in federal prison should they be convicted.
All three remain in federal custody. It was not clear from court dockets whether any of them had retained a lawyer.
Publisher’s Clearing House says it never contacts sweepstakes winners by phone and will never require legitimate winners to pay any fees or taxes up front. The sweepstakes company urges those who believes they may have been targeted by a similar scam to contact local authorities.