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From TheGrio.com:
It seems hard to believe anyone would fall for this scam: Someone from a foreign country claims you've won millions, but first you must pay steep fees before you get your winnings.
Unfortunately, the lure of big money is just too much for some to resist.
A Pembroke Pines widow named Mary Kubalak wired nearly $400,000 to her scammer in Jamaica, home to a thriving telemarketing fraud industry that brings in hundreds of millions of illicit U.S. dollars every year.
In an exclusive interview with NBC Miami, Jamaica's top organized crime investigator, Senior Superintendent Fitz Bailey, says unscrupulous employees of legitimate telemarketing centers - even some in Miami - sell lists of phone numbers to the scammers who target the elderly.
American police often do almost nothing to pursue the bad guys.
So NBC Miami went looking for Mary's money. Our search took us deep into the dark streets of Kingston, winding treacherous mountain roads, through chaotic Montego Bay far from tourist areas, to the Jamaica that never gets in the travel brochures.
But our story began last summer in a Broward courthouse hallway, where Mary Kubalak was judged to be incapacitated for believing she'd won a $7 million Jamaica lottery.
"I could not convince her," said her financial advisor David Treece. "Nobody could convince her. It's a sad, tough case."
Treece took his own client to court to stop her from sending money to her Jamaican scammer.
They had convinced her she must pay fees to get her millions. Over the months, she wired thousands of dollars time and time again, until she sent more than $370,000 to Chris Andre Dehaney, according to documents and sources.
We used Mary's phone records to call the scammer last summer, who posed as a woman.
"If I knew how to take Mary's $35,000, honest to God I would!" Dehaney declared in his female voice.
So we went to Jamaica to confront Dehaney, not knowing what we'd face. Our source said Dehaney lived inside a gated community in Portmore, just outside Kingston, where inside he ran his broad scam.
We told the security guard at the entrance to Caribbean Estates "This guy is suspected of stealing $370,000, maybe $400,000, from one old woman in Miami. We'd really like to catch this guy."
Guards remember him. We even knew exactly which townhouse he's renting. But property managers blocked our entry and insisted he no longer lives there. The trail grew cold.
Read page 2 of this article on: TheGrio.com