PART OF LOTTERY SCAMMER’S SENTENCE INCLUDES PAYING VICTIMS 10% OF SALARY WHEN RELEASED

First Jamaican extradited for lottery fraud gets sentenced

The first Jamaican citizen extradited to the U.S. to face lottery fraud charges was sentenced to almost four years in federal prison Friday morning, and prosecutors said this could pave the way to holding foreigners accountable for preying on Americans.

“We hope and expect more [arrests] will be coming down,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bertha Mitrani. “Precedence has been set. The message is now in Jamaica, ‘You’re not going to be sitting pretty. We will be reaching in to get you.'”

In April, Damion Bryan Barrett, 29, pleaded guilty to being part of a wire fraud conspiracy that tricked seniors into believing they had won millions of dollars and needed to pay advance fees to claim their winnings. The sweepstakes scam used middlemen in South Florida to collect cash from victims all over the U.S.
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Victims were persuaded to send hundreds or thousands of dollars by mail, Western Union and MoneyGram to Barrett’s cohorts in Broward County. The middlemen took a percentage and sent the rest on to Barrett and his associates in Jamaica.

U.S. District Judge William Zloch sentenced Barrett to 46 months in prison and ordered him to pay $94,456 in restitution. If Barrett receives a job in prison that pays wages, he’ll have to turn over half of it toward the judgment. He’ll receive alcohol and drug abuse treatment, at his attorney’s request.

He was also sentenced to five years of supervised probation after his release and was ordered to pay 10 percent of his monthly earnings toward the judgment. But his attorney, Bruce Fleisher of Miami, said the issue was moot because Barrett will be deported after his release from prison.

Barrett, in a blue jail uniform and hands shackled, told the judge he wants to go home to Jamaica to be with his son and serve as a “better person for him. So this won’t happen to him.”

Friday was his child’s sixth birthday.

His co-defendant, Oneike Mickale Barnett, 29, is serving five years in federal prison for his role, but Barrett’s attorney argued he should receive less time because Barnett was the “brains” behind the operation.

The scam operated in Montego Bay and Broward County between late 2008 and early 2012, federal authorities said.

The elderly victims were told that they had won millions of dollars in a lottery, and that they had to pay advance “fees” of several hundred to several thousand dollars in order to collect their winnings. The criminals contacted victims by phone and sent letters claiming to come from a genuine sweepstakes company, the IRS and the Federal Reserve, investigators said. The victims sent more than $120,000 dollars but received nothing.

Prosecutor Kathryn Drenning told the judge the duo kept detailed records of their prey, including their age, whether they were widowed and if they had easy access to cash. She said they were operating for several years before getting caught.

“They were looking to target people they thought would be vulnerable” throughout the U.S. and Canada, she said in court.

Drenning called the proliferation of international lottery crimes “pernicious” and said too many fraudsters abroad believe they are “immune from prosecution.”