A federal judge in South Carolina sent a Jamaican man to prison for 36 months for phoning elderly Americans with news that they had won a sweepstakes, then telling them taxes and fees had to be paid before the prize could be released. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from about June 2015 to about May 2022 and involved at least 115 victims. The court also ordered $349,433.75 in restitution to those victims. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina announced the sentence on Wednesday, October 7, and the case lays out in plain terms how long a prize-fee script can run on phones, mail and ordinary payment channels.
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The people most exposed to this kind of call are those who take a stranger’s good news at face value. Prosecutors say Alando Gentles and his co-conspirators reached elderly victims by phone and by mail, told them a sweepstakes prize was waiting, and then said they had to pay taxes and fees to collect it. In this case the demand for money came right after the good news, and the payments moved by prepaid card, money order, mailed cash and wire.
The Justice Department describes contact by phone and mail but does not say where the callers got their names and numbers. Phone numbers and home addresses are the details that data brokers and people-search sites list, and Incogni sends removal requests to those brokers for the customer and keeps re-sending them.
Gentles, the Myrtle Beach operation and the Jamaica end
Alando Gentles, 43, of Jamaica was sentenced on a wire fraud conspiracy charge. Chief U.S. District Judge Sherri A. Lydon imposed 36 months in prison followed by three years of court-ordered supervision, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office announcement, which adds that there is no parole in the federal system. Prosecutors describe a cash-award and lottery telemarketing scheme run by individuals in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with domestic and international connections. Gentles took part from Jamaica.
His role, as the office describes it, had three parts. He called victims. He received wire transfers of scheme proceeds in Jamaica. He also made ATM withdrawals in Jamaica from an account that held scheme money. That puts him at both ends of the operation: the telephone pitch that started a victim’s payments and the withdrawal that turned wired money into cash overseas. He was extradited from Jamaica after his indictment, so bringing him to the United States was part of the case before any sentence could be imposed.
Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Hummel prosecuted. The Postal Inspection Service’s part follows from how the scheme collected money. Victims mailed money orders, cash or personal checks, and they also bought prepaid cards and wired funds. The announcement names no victims and no co-conspirators, and it gives no sentencing date beyond the October 7 release, so the public account stops at what the court imposed on one man.
Why the money moved by prepaid card, money order and wire
Victims paid in at least five ways, according to the announcement: prepaid cards, USPS money orders and bank money orders, cash or personal checks sent by mail, deposits into co-conspirators’ bank accounts, and wire transfers to those accounts. The mix leaves different trails. Deposits and wires end in bank accounts that investigators can follow, while mailed cash and prepaid cards are harder to trace. A scheme that accepts all of them can take payment from a victim who does not use online banking at all.
The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on fake prize and lottery scams lists similar channels. It says scammers ask for wire transfers, payment apps, cash, gift cards and cryptocurrency because those payments are hard to trace and hard to recover. The agency also says a real prize costs nothing to collect, so any request for taxes, shipping, processing or customs fees is a sign of a scam. Its advice for anyone who has already paid is to act as soon as possible, since a quick report improves the chance of getting money back.
The timeline adds a second lesson. June 2015 to May 2022 is close to seven years, and the Justice Department’s figure of at least 115 victims is a minimum count, not a ceiling. A scheme that stayed in business that long on ordinary telephones, the mail and bank transfers was a routine, not a burst. Each call followed the same order of events as the announcement lays it out: a win, a fee, a payment.
What 36 months and $349,433.75 in restitution settle
Restitution is the court’s order to repay victims, and here it totals $349,433.75. Divided evenly across 115 victims, that comes to a little over $3,000 each, though the announcement does not break the amount down by person and “at least 115” leaves the true count open. An order is also not a payment. The announcement does not say how much has been collected or how much is expected, so the figure marks what the court found was lost, not what victims have received.
The prison term is 36 months, and the three years of supervision that follow outlast it. For a scheme that ran close to seven years, supervision is the part of the sentence that reaches furthest past the prison gate. The Justice Department’s account covers Gentles alone. It names no other defendant, so whether the Myrtle Beach participants face their own charges is not answered in the public record on this case.
Reporting a prize call or a payment sent by mail
Anyone who has already sent money has specific routes, laid out in the FTC’s guide to what to do after a scam. Cash sent by U.S. mail should be reported right away to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 1-877-876-2455, one of the two agencies behind this case. The FTC says the service may be able to intercept a domestic package that has not been delivered, for a fee. Prepaid card issuers, banks and wire services each take reports of their own, and the FTC advises saying plainly that a scammer tricked the sender and asking for a refund.
The 36-month sentence and the $349,433.75 order rest on one U.S. Attorney’s Office announcement, and what it records is a method that held steady for nearly seven years: good news by phone or mail, then a fee, then a payment in a form that is hard to reverse. The announcement counts the people who paid, at least 115 of them. It does not count the ones who hung up, and that gap is the reason a prize that asks for money first is worth ending on the spot.
A prize script needs only a phone number and an address
Victims in this case lost money after a call or a letter reached them, and every payment began there. Incogni asks data brokers and people-search sites to remove personal information, sends the removal requests on the customer’s behalf and keeps re-sending them. Less personal data on broker lists can mean fewer scam calls, texts and emails.
Start removing your phone number and address from broker lists with Incogni →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
