Rochester man the 'money mule' for Jamaican lottery scam

Henry Jessen, now 99 years old, has lived quite a life: a ranch hand, a blacksmith who built his own home more than 70 years ago, even a survivor of a lightning strike.

A frugal man, Jessen retired in 1978, setting aside enough money through the years to survive on. But in 2012 he became the victim of one of the country's more prominent frauds: The scam, originating in Jamaica, targeted Jessen and told him he'd won $15 million in a lottery and a BMW car.

Jessen bit; agreeing to send money for tax payments and shipment. By the time authorities caught the scam's middle man —  Roydel Nicholson of Rochester, who was recently convicted and sentenced for his crimes — Jessen was out nearly $200,000.

"All of his nest egg is literally gone," said his son, Peter Jessen. "The Jamaicans got it."

Lottery frauds are one of the nation's most commonplace rip-offs, second only to the popular scams in which people claim to be agents of the Internal Revenue Service. And the ample information on the Internet has made the scams more targeted and personal.

Search engines give fraudsters personal family information, including past addresses or the names of children or grandchildren. And that information is wielded as proof of the authenticity of the duplicitous caller.

"The technology is so good now," said Art Mason, the director of Lifespan's Elder Abuse Prevention Program. "They go on the Internet (and) find out minor details. They troll Facebook (for personal information.) They continually evolve, or devolve I call it, with technology."

Jamaica has become such a haven for the crimes that the country last year activated a Lottery Scam Task Force, a police unit that breaks up the "boiler rooms" where the swindlers operate.

The aging population in the United States is the typical target. There are lists — often dubbed "sucker lists" — that identify vulnerable prey and circulate among the criminal organizations.

"It's gotten to the point where there's hundreds of millions leaving (the United States)," said Assistant United States Attorney John Field, who prosecuted Nicholson. "Nobody knows just how much."

A jury last year convicted Nicholson of international money laundering and three counts of mail fraud. He was also acquitted of three separate mail fraud counts.

The trial was one of the first in the country for an individual accused of a role in a Jamaican lottery fraud.

From victim to "money mule"

Roydel Nicholson, a 64-year-old Rochester man, was the so-called "money mule" with the lottery swindle that targeted Jessen. Jessen, who lives in Paradise, California, was lured into sending Nicholson money, and then Nicholson sent it to a Jamaican-based criminal who has so far evaded prosecution.
Authorities believe Nicholson kept a cut; his attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender  Jeffrey Ciccone, said there is no evidence that Nicholson did.

According to Ciccone, Jamaican-born Nicholson became a middle man via the same route as have others who live in the United States and become intermediaries in the scam: Nicholson was a victim himself.

In 2011 Nicholson received a mailing saying he'd won $15 million, followed by a phone call from Jamaica, Ciccone said in a court filing.

Nicholson was told he needed to pay fees in advance, and sent $860, which was almost all of the money he had. Nicholson claimed he was then told that, to collect his winnings, he would need to be a middle man in the United States. In this role, Jessen and others would send money to Nicholson, who would forward the illegally gained money to individuals in Jamaica.

"Mr. Nicholson eagerly participated, believing that he would soon receive his jackpot prize," Ciccone wrote in court papers.

Field and other federal prosecutors don't doubt that Nicholson had himself fallen for the scam, but they did not believe his claims that he was an innocent and unwitting participant in the fraud against Jessen. Nicholson also had other victims across the country, Field said, but they had died by the time Nicholson went to trial and was convicted last year.

"People who end up being money mules often were smaller victims," Field said. " ... They get roped into this, obviously. They go in with eyes wide open, in my view."

A widower, Jessen was 94 when he got the first call, alerting him to his major score in the lottery.

"I said, 'Well, I don't know where it would be coming from because I haven't been playing any lottery games or anything like that,' " Jessen said in a videotaped deposition introduced at Nicholson's trial.

Tax season is here: Don't be fooled by scams

The caller, authorities say, was based in Jamaica. He used the name James Adams.

He convinced Jessen that Jessen had been enrolled in a lottery automatically by shopping at a nearby neighborhood store. Jessen had been the lucky winner of $15 million and a car, Adams said.

To collect the prizes, Jessen needed to send money to a man in Rochester, Roydel Nicholson, to help cover taxes and shipment fees, Adams said.

Jessen at first was skeptical.

"I asked him what the deuce he was talking about," Jessen said in his deposition. "I had never heard of if before."

Adams persisted, and convinced Jessen that he needed to send money to get money. And the millions he would receive, Adams said, would be a wonderful gift to his family.

Jessen sent money orders, and sometimes cash, to Roydel Nicholson. Each time Adams would find a reason that more was needed. Jessen never spoke directly to Nicholson.

Jessen once sent nearly $25,000 in cash to a separate individual in Canada whom Adams had given as another intermediary, but Canadian authorities, familiar with the person there, intercepted the cash and returned it to Jessen.

When Jessen became suspicious of Adams, he changed his phone number. But his previous line simply identified the new phone number, and Adams kept calling. Jessen changed it again, and Adams got the new number.

"I got it changed and it wasn't 15 minutes until Adams (Nicholson) called me (and) wanted to know why I changed my phone number," Jessen said in the deposition.

NY issues fraud alert for immigrants

The change in number alerted his children that something may be amiss, said Peter Jessen. But Henry Jessen said he had good reasons for the change, and did not let on to his belief that he was a lottery winner.

As months passed, his children became more concerned, eventually piecing together that their father was a victim. Jessen said he grew terribly frustrated, because he could not get local police or prosecutors to intervene. This is a common refrain — law enforcement is sometimes slow to assist with investigations into the frauds because the possible criminals often aren't local and the investigations can be time-consuming and sometimes fruitless.

"It's the source of some frustration, especially for the victim's families, that there's not more being done to stop it," Field said.

Jessen apparently realized he was being scammed, but did not at first approach his children. His children inquired and even questioned officials at the banks where Jessen withdrew money. Some of the tellers had become concerned, but Jessen always had answers for the withdrawals, such as stories of home renovations. The bank would not release private information about Jessen's account to his children.

"It took about a month (of questions from his children) for him to finally 'fess up as to what was going on," Peter Jessen said.

Traumatized victims

The federal Postal Inspection Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement often are the policing agencies for the frauds. Jessen's children reached out to the federal agencies. Luckily, Jessen had kept many of his records, including money order receipts and mailing labels.

Agents traced Nicholson from there. When they searched his Rochester home, they found records showing how he'd victimized Jessen and others across the country.

Nicholson was sentenced this month to 87 months in prison.

Rochester-based Postal Inspector Michelle Mann said Nicholson was the fifth Jamaican lottery scam arrest in the Rochester area in recent years. Families can be traumatized by the victimization, she said, especially when the targets realize they've lost savings they had intended for their heirs.

"We've had victims commit suicide over this," Mann said. "It's heart-breaking."

A U.S. Senate Committee on Aging estimated that "sophisticated Jamaican con artists placed approximately 30,000 phone calls to the United States per day and stole $300 million per year from tens of thousands of seniors."

"It gets under-reported because senior citizens who fall victim are embarrassed," said Shelley Carosella, a Buffalo-based postal inspector who also has investigated lottery and other frauds.

She and her colleagues teach prevention courses. A major message, she said, is: "The people you meet on the phone are not your friends."

The victims are often trusting individuals, unsuspecting that anyone would dupe them in such an underhanded way, investigators say. Jessen, for his part, had lived a life in which he carefully watched his spending and cared for his family.

He survived a lightning strike when working on a lumber yard in the 1930s. With his wife, he later designed their home, and he built it himself.

"He's a man of few words," said Peter Jessen, whose mother died in 2007. "Mom did the talking."

In his deposition, Jessen is asked "Did the $15 million arrive then, after you mailed Mr. Nicholson the money?"

"I'm still waiting," Jessen answered.

GCRAIG@Gannett.com

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Scam Season

The scams are almost like the weather, changing with the seasons.

This is the time of year for snowplow scams, in which individuals take money up front and don’t do the work.

• (Tips from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Attorney General’s Office, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and others: Don’t pay with cash; get references; check BBB for complaints; ensure contractor has an address, and double check it).

The spring will bring more of the IRS frauds, with aggressive callers alleging they’re agents telephoning about unpaid taxes.

• (Tips: The IRS will not ask for credit card information over the phone, nor will it demand over the phone that taxes be paid. Nor does it threaten lawsuits. These are a few tell-tale signs of a fraudulent call.)

“We see an uptick every year with sort of seasonal-specific ones,” said Art Mason, director of Lifespan’s Elder Abuse Prevention Program.

Typically, there are two variations of scams, regardless of its illicit hook.

There are the urgent ones, saying money must be sent immediately or dire consequences await. (The fraudulent IRS investigators threaten imprisonment). Then there are the swindlers who inveigle their way into the confidence of senior citizens with multiple caring calls. Oftentimes, Mason said, the target is a senior citizen who may be lonely and isolated and has infrequent contact with family members.

Sometimes the caller has discovered the possible victim — a widow or widower — through an obituary.

“We say it ad nauseum to family members: How about just picking up the phone and calling (an aging relative) once a week?” Mason said. And, he said, if the relative shares financial information, be sure to check that there are not unusual withdrawals or unpaid bills piling up.

While federal authorities have seen area cases involving Jamaican-based lottery scams, other frauds are just as prevalent, and often anchored in the United States. Seniors are the prime target.

Many victims simply can’t believe that someone would callously rip them off, said Shelley Carosella, a postal inspector with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

“They’re a trusting generation,” she said. “Your word was your word back then.”