A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh has charged four individuals with involvement in an international lottery scheme that preyed on the elderly, according to a recent announcement by Acting United States Attorney Troy Rivetti. The defendants face allegations of mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after reportedly deceiving victims out of over $4.5 million by convincing them that they had won a fictitious sweepstakes requiring payment of taxes and fees to claim the prize.
The indictment revealed that Yonel Burnett, 28, of Jamaica, was hit with a two-count charge involving fraud and money laundering, while Omar McKenzie, 34, from Lauderdale Lakes, Florida; Shemeca Shields, 29, of East Hartford, Connecticut; and Nicole Lamont, 30, of Eastham, Massachusetts, were each indicted on a single count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, Burnett and McKenzie were already in custody following their arrests in Florida on March 14 and March 27, respectively, Lamont was arrested in Massachusetts on March 23, along with Shields who was nabbed in Connecticut on March 26. These new charges relate to prior indictments from December 2023 that named seven other co-conspirators.
As described in the Department of Justice's release, the scam involved using forged documents enhanced with government agency seals, which led the victims to send money through various means. The money was then laundered through an elaborate network of bank accounts and 'money mules' before being withdrawn in Jamaica. Perpetrators also manipulated earlier victims into unwittingly acting as intermediaries in the laundering process.
These charges come amid the Department of Justice's broader initiative to shield older adults from financial crimes. Just last week, the office brought forth another indictment involving a man from the Dominican Republic residing in Cleveland, Ohio, who was part of a group that used the 'grandparent scam' to defraud individuals in Pennsylvania and Ohio of thousands of dollars by posing as their grandchild in distress, then direct the money to be collected and taken to Ohio by drivers from ride-share services such as Lyft and Uber, according to the same grand jury announcement. The maximum sentence for these offenses could be up to 20 years in prison and fines equating to twice the monetary loss of any victim. Nonetheless, all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, a fundamental tenet of the U.S. legal system.
