Adrian Frater, News Editor

Western Bureau:

The infamous Montego Bay 'lotto scam', which is being blamed for the western city's intolerable murder rate, is said to be the cause of the death of Ann Mowle, a 72-year-old United States grandmother, who recently committed suicide.

According to a report in last Wednesday's edition of the New Jersey-based Hardbeat News, a Caribbean diaspora newspaper, Ms. Mowle, who had, reportedly, become depressed after losing her life-savings to the Jamaican-based scam, apparently took her life after failing in her bid to recover her money.

Body found

Mowle's body was, reportedly, found at the edge of a jetty at the Worthington Avenue beach in Spring Lake, in New Jersey, two weeks ago.

According to relatives of the deceased woman, she had spent her entire life savings of US$248,000 trying to collect US$2.5million, which Jamaican scam artistes had told her she had won.

After spending the last several months trying to reclaim her money, which she had sent to Jamaica via some 50 wire transfers, ranging from US$158 to US$4,750, relatives said Mowle became frustrated and depressed by her lack of success and committed suicide.

The lottery scam, which was all the rage in Montego Bay last year and had several communities awash with cash, is perpetuated by persons (diallers), who use illicitly-obtained personal information about American citizens to con them into sending them money on the pretext that they had won a lottery and needed to send them money to clear their winnings.

Players fingered

"We are aware of the scam and we have identified some of the players," Assistant Commissioner of Police Denver Frater told The Gleaner, prior to a major Kingfish operation in Montego Bay late last year, which netted 10 persons said to be major players in the scam.

During a bloody rampage in Montego Bay last year, during which at least five persons were beheaded, the police blamed the violence on the scam and said the heavy weaponry in the city's criminal gangs were procured through funding from the scam.

With investors in Montego Bay information technology sector, whose operations were being compromised by the scam, threatening to pull out of Jamaica late last year, the Government declared an intention to take measures to Parliament to enact a cyber crime Law to battle the scam.