A FAMILY DRIVEN TO DEATH BY PHONE SCAMMERS

The phone calls wouldn't stop.

The man on the other end of the line made promises of a big payoff: millions of dollars in prize money. But first the IRS needed $1,500 in taxes, he insisted, then the jackpot would arrive at the family home, a camera crew ready to capture the excitement.

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The calls came a couple of times a day; other times, nearly 50.

Mr. Albert, we need the money to be sent today ...

Don't hang up the phone, Mr. Albert ...

Mr. Albert, don't tell your wife about this ...
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Albert Poland Jr. had worked 45 years for the Burlington hosiery factory in Harriman, Tennessee, starting off as a mechanic before rising to become a quality-control manager.

He and his wife, Virginia, were living a humble life in the Appalachian foothills near Knoxville, having raised a son and daughter in their 62 years of marriage. The family patriarch was known simply as Daddy.
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At age 81, his mind was faltering. He suffered from Alzheimer's and dementia. And the caller -- a man in Jamaica -- preyed on that vulnerability.

Poland's lucidity fluctuated. In February, he went to the local police station and asked whether they could make the phone calls from the 876 area code stop. Another time, he went to the post office to send money to his caller. The teller stopped him, talked with him and handed him a brochure on Jamaican lottery scams. He thanked her.

His family tried to intervene numerous times. On one of his good days, he told his wife simply, "I'm in too deep."
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On March 21 the caller asked for $1,500. Poland withdrew the maximum $400 from his ATM and sent it via Western Union. He was sure he was going to win more than $2 million. He hoped to pay off his son's mortgage and help his family for years to come.

His son, Chris Poland, was livid when his mother told him his father was talking with the caller again. Chris, 53, had had the same conversation for months with his dad; his father had sent more than $5,000 to the caller. Chris spoke with his father like most any son would. "Daddy, you taught me the value of the dollar. Why are you giving money away?"

As father and son talked by cell phone, the Jamaican called back on Poland's land line.

Mr. Albert ...
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The next morning, a Sunday, was like a repeat record. More calls and another tense phone conversation between father and son.

Virginia got dressed for church. Her husband decided to stay home.

It was a beautiful spring morning, with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees and the trees a lush green. Poland strolled around his yard. A neighbor waved: "Looks like we're gonna have to start mowing soon."
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"Yeah, looks like it," Poland said.

He walked to the basement of the family home. He carried with him a snub-nose .38 revolver.

In his suicide note, Poland told his family not to spend much on his funeral and said he hoped that when more than $2 million arrived tomorrow, it would vindicate him.

Virginia and Albert Poland were married for 62 years. "He was my best friend. He was my buddy," she says.

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'Truly heartbreaking'

Albert Poland was in the grips of a Jamaican lottery scammer -- part of a cottage industry that targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually to the Caribbean island nation.

AARP has run campaigns warning about the scams originating from the Jamaican 876 area code. The U.S. Postal Service has published pamphlets and distributed them across the country. The Senate Special Committee on Aging held hearings two years ago about the magnitude of the problem and urged U.S. and Jamaican authorities to do more.

"The Jamaican lottery scam is a cruel, persistent and sophisticated scam that has victimized seniors throughout the nation," said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's chairwoman. "It is truly heartbreaking that this scam has robbed seniors of hundreds of millions of dollars."
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It's such a huge problem in Jamaica that the scams have been dubbed the highest-level Tier 1 threat: a "clear and present danger" to national security, says Peter Bunting, Jamaica's national security minister.

From children to the nation's most tech-savvy 20-somethings, from a former deputy mayor of Montego Bay to the most vicious gang members, lottery scams have left few segments of the island nation untouched.

"It is extremely corrosive to the fabric of society," Bunting says. "We have seen where it has corrupted police officers. It has corrupted legitimate businesspersons who end up playing some role in laundering money."

The Poland family first spoke to CNN in April. Investigators are looking into Albert Poland's case and hope to provide some solace to the family soon; for now, his scammer remains at large.

From there, CNN followed the money, traveling to ground zero of the scams, Montego Bay, where we witnessed a police raid of a suspect's house.

In Jamaica, more than 200 deaths a year have been tied to the scams. And in the United States, the scams have cost people their lives -- and their life savings.

Trial marks U.S. first

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Edna Schmeets looks like she's straight out of "The Golden Girls" central casting: a grandma with curly gray hair and a 5-foot-2 frame. At 86, she's soft-spoken, yet opinionated.

Just a month after Albert Poland took his life in Tennessee, Schmeets faced down her scammer in federal court in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Sanjay Ashani Williams started off as a scammer around 2008, making calls to elderly Americans. He eventually graduated to buying and selling caller lists -- reams of information containing the names and numbers of tens of thousands of potential victims.

Williams made more than $5 million on his operation, the government said. His case marked the first U.S. trial of what officials call a "lead list scammer."
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In addition to dealing in lists, Williams continued making calls himself, including to Schmeets.

"He said I had won this $19 million from American Cash Awards and that I would have to, you know, pay taxes on this money before they would release it," Schmeets testified, according to trial transcripts. "And they kept calling about sending another check and another check and another check. I mean, it just kept on and on until I had both my life insurances gone, all my savings. Everything.

"I just had lost everything."
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She sent checks for $65,000, $57,000 and $20,000 over the course of the next nine months.

How much did she lose total?

"Oh, my goodness," she testified. "When I figured it out, it was about $297,000."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clare Hochhalter probed, "Did you become suspicious after you kept sending money and you didn't get your prize?"

"Yes, I did," Schmeets replied.

But she said she was told not to tell anyone "about this until you get your winnings, your $19 million. Then, you can tell everybody."

Why keep sending money?

Because, Schmeets testified, she was told she would get "all your money back, plus the $19 million."
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Schmeets and her husband, Lawrence, had been married 62 years. They lived on a small cattle farm. Her husband worked in the railroad industry; she clerked at a grocery store to bring in extra cash. They raised five children: four boys and one girl. The family had endured tragedy years ago when one of their sons died at age 31.

Her husband died in 2010. Phone calls congratulating her on winning a lottery began in fall 2011 and continued through June 2012.

Her motivations for wanting the money were simple: "I was going to just give it to my children."

Getting hold of a caller list is gold in the scamming world.

Originating from legitimate calling centers, such lists contain the names, addresses and phone numbers of thousands of Americans and can be purchased online in the black market.
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Scammers begin by congratulating their prey for winning a lottery or a Mercedes. Victims are then directed to pay "taxes" up front, typically $1,500 to $3,000 through Western Union or Moneygram. The winnings never surface.

Sometimes scammers send checks for thousands of dollars to lure people in; the checks bounce, but by then the victims have paid their "taxes."

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Scammers hook the most vulnerable, often tricking them into sending cash again and again. They sense a lonely person, flatter them and convince them they're friends. Sometimes, victims get coerced into sending TVs and appliances to Jamaica. A rare few have flown to Jamaica and married their scammers.

When victims try to back out, scammers use Google Earth to zoom in on their homes, describe the neighborhood and threaten to kill or rape family members.

One elderly American has been duped of more than $1.5 million, authorities say. Another taped 99 $100 bills to the pages of Better Homes and Gardens and sent it to her scammer.

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Three years ago, a 70-year-old engineer sent hundreds of thousands to his scammers. At one point, he received a letter purportedly from the U.S. ambassador to Jamaica asking him to take part in a sting. The man flew to Jamaica, but authorities -- who'd gotten wind of the plan -- met the man at a bank before he wired $50,000 to his scammers' account. The scammers' had planned to kill him shortly after the transfer.

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Some of the more sophisticated scammers send mass mailings to tens of thousands of Americans, asking them to fill out a form and send it back if they want to participate in a sweepstakes. The mailings often appear legitimate. The scammers will look at the handwriting of respondents and focus on ones who appear to be elderly.

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"I just had lost everything."

She sent checks for $65,000, $57,000 and $20,000 over the course of the next nine months.

How much did she lose total?

"Oh, my goodness," she testified. "When I figured it out, it was about $297,000."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clare Hochhalter probed, "Did you become suspicious after you kept sending money and you didn't get your prize?"

"Yes, I did," Schmeets replied.

But she said she was told not to tell anyone "about this until you get your winnings, your $19 million. Then, you can tell everybody."

Why keep sending money?

Because, Schmeets testified, she was told she would get "all your money back, plus the $19 million."

Schmeets and her husband, Lawrence, had been married 62 years. They lived on a small cattle farm. Her husband worked in the railroad industry; she clerked at a grocery store to bring in extra cash. They raised five children: four boys and one girl. The family had endured tragedy years ago when one of their sons died at age 31.

Her husband died in 2010. Phone calls congratulating her on winning a lottery began in fall 2011 and continued through June 2012.

Her motivations for wanting the money were simple: "I was going to just give it to my children."

Instead, all that she and her husband had worked for was gone.

She glanced occasionally across the room at Williams. He never returned her gaze. Instead, she said, he rifled through a garbage bag containing hundreds of pages of court documents. He was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, with a bushy beard and braids piled on top of his head.

She thought about how different he was than the person she had envisioned. "He seemed like such a nice guy on the phone," Schmeets would say later.

Williams operated out of Montego Bay and established an intricate network of runners based in Charlotte, North Carolina, to pick up money and send it to him.

His website, gamblerslead.com, was a gold mine for scammers seeking phone numbers for elderly Americans. Authorities studied more than 500,000 emails connected to the site, an FBI agent testified.

Authorities discovered that Williams was buying lists at wholesale on the black market, where they can go for up to $5,000 and contain tens of thousands of names. He carved up the lists and sold names and numbers to callers for $5.50 apiece.

Thirty-two people in the United States and Jamaica were indicted in the scheme. Eleven pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, seven are awaiting trial, and 14 are awaiting extradition. According to authorities, many pretended to be FBI agents, bank personnel and IRS workers to convince people that their lottery winnings were real.

Seventy-two Americans, all older than 55, were identified as losing money in Williams' operation.

William Porter, 94, was a fighter pilot in World War II in the Pacific theater. He lost $250,000. Charlotte Davis, 64, was also targeted. She testified that she was told by her scammer that if she didn't send the money, he'd rape her daughters and kill her son.

A 72-year-old victim from Odessa, Texas, committed suicide. Prosecutor Hochhalter told CNN that it was too difficult legally to bring homicide charges in the case. "But we believe we have the factual evidence to suggest that this offense involved conduct that created a risk of serious bodily injury or death," Hochhalter said. "And that's evidenced by the fact that at least one person did commit suicide."
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Williams was combative at the defense table through much of the trial. He said his rights were violated when he was arrested on a trip in North Carolina, and he threw fits that annoyed even his own lawyer. He refused the judge's recommendation to wear nice clothes in court, instead opting for his prison outfit. He had the same reaction when the judge suggested he might want to consider a plea deal that would result in three to five years in prison.

Instead, Williams placed his fate in the hands of a jury.
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His attorney, Charles Stock, tried to make the case that hotels, credit card companies, casinos and other companies buy and sell Americans' personal information all the time -- and that it's perfectly legal. This is true, the prosecution countered, but it becomes illegal when you knowingly use the information for a crime.

Williams was convicted on an array of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges. He faces up to 40 years in prison.

"That was a big relief," Schmeets said, "to know that he's going to prison."

During the trial, an expert from Jamaica's equivalent of the FBI gave an assessment of just how endemic the scamming has become.

Kevin Watson, a corporal with Jamaica's Major Organized Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, told the court that many Jamaicans see scamming as "the only source of income for them."

"In small pockets of communities," Watson said, "you will find many persons involved in this activity. You will also find children who grew up ... to believe that this is OK -- it's OK to get involved in lottery scamming."

SOURCE: CNN NEWS