HARRISBURG, Pa. — Three lawful permanent residents of the United States have been found guilty of all charges relating to a lottery scam that targeted elderly Americans between 2017 and 2020, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced today.
A jury found Caron Pitter, 47, Rohan Lyttle, 49, and Charlene Marshall, 44, all originally from Jamaica, guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering after a two-week trial. Pitter was also charged with several counts of mail fraud, and Lyttle was charged with multiple counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and interstate transportation of goods taken by fraud.
A fourth defendant, Rohan Lytle Jr., 26, was charged with some of the same offenses, and he is still at large.
Evidence presented at trial showed that someone based in Jamaica would pose as a representative from Publisher's Clearing House and contact elderly Americans to falsely tell them they had won multi-million dollar prizes, prosecutors said. The victims were told they needed to needed to prepay taxes and other fees in order to claim their supposed prizes.
The scammers got victims to send cash through the mail, complete online bank transfers, allow the fraudsters to access their credit/debit cards and purchase goods on Amazon.
A 78-year-old former resident of Mechanicsburg, a 70-year-old resident of Philadelphia and a 90-year-old resident of Walterboro, South Carolina, testified at trial. Collectively, these victims lost over $1.1 million in connection with this fraud scheme.
In some cases, victims were also directed to receive funds from third parties that they didn’t know and send those funds to other individuals that they were led to believe were also Publisher’s Clearing House representatives.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that the fraudsters used the money from the lottery scam to purchase cars in online auctions, fix them up at a body shop they owned in Queens, New York called Rocars Auto and then sell the vehicles at an affiliated car dealership in Jamaica, Rolcam Company Limited.
The Mechanicsburg victim bought $15,000 in car parts and shipped them to Rocars Auto in order to repair and receive a Land Rover he was told he had won in addition to his cash prize. The car was instead fixed and sent to Rolcam Company Limited, where prosecutors believe it was sold to someone associated with the lottery scam.
In order to hide the money the scammers received from their victims, they distributed the money among each other so that the funds could be deposited in a variety of bank accounts and exchanged for cashier’s checks so that they would not appear in bank accounts at all. The defendants also regularly broke up larger amounts of cash into smaller amounts to make their deposits look smaller in size, which had the effect of evading banks’ reporting requirements for large cash transactions, the Attorney's Office said.
The maximum penalty under federal law for mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering is 20 years for each offense. The maximum penalty for interstate transportation of goods taken by fraud is 10 years.
