Jamaican Man Arrested in Lauderhill for Running Lottery Scam Operation

Another Jamaican has been arrested in Florida for running a lottery scam operation that defrauded elderly victims from New York, Arizona, and Texas out of over US$500,000.

Linton Roberts, 50, was arrested in Lauderhill on Monday. He faces 21 charges, including money laundering, grand theft, larceny, exploitation of the elderly, and fraud. His bond has been set at US$1.1 million, but he remains at the Joseph V Conte Facility in Pompano Beach.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, the scams from April 2018 through as recently as last week were primarily carried out the same way. Elderly victims in New York, Massachusetts, California, and elsewhere received calls from someone using different names and told them they were lottery winners.

To claim their winnings, the victims were told they needed to mail cashier’s checks to a Lauderhill address, later determined to be Roberts’. Roberts scammed victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for four years.

Upon realizing they were scammed, his victims, with ages ranging between 75 to 83 years old, contacted the Lauderhill Police Department.

According to an affidavit, Roberts also received over $12,930 after fraudulently applying for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, despite never owning a business.

Roberts is just one of several Jamaicans to be arrested for lottery scamming and fraud in Florida since the start of the year.

Earlier this week, a South Florida grand jury indicted a Jamaican veteran police officer for importing cocaine into the United States with the intent to distribute it. The 42-year-old Shelian Cherine Allen was caught with several packages of cocaine in various parts of her body at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. If convicted, she faces up to 40 years in prison on each count.

A week before her arrest, another Jamaican, Richard Morgan, was arrested by the Bay County Police in Florida for allegedly scamming a 92-year-old woman out of US$54,000 (approximately J$8.5 million).