Adrian Frater, News Editor
ACP Les Green: With this new task force, the process should flow much faster and we will be able to bring people to justice in a much shorter time.
Western Bureau:
THE POLICE'S bid to break the back of the illicit Montego Bay Lotto Scam is poised to take a new turn come next month as a new task force - including American law-enforcement agents - is to be established under the ambit of the Major Investigation Task Force (MIT).
"Everything is now in place to get this task force operational. We are just waiting on the United States (US) to provide us with the names of their agents who will be a part of the task force," MIT head, Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green, tells The Sunday Gleaner.
According to Green, the new task force, to be operational by August 1, will provide the police with both additional resources and scope to go after the players in the illicit scheme. It involves fleecing unsuspecting Americans of millions of dollars under the guise they are paying processing fees on the lottery prizes they believed they had won.
With US agents on board, Green says local police would no longer have to go through the cumbersome processes now being used to conduct overseas investigations. Currently, the MIT has to make a request to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who, in turn, makes an application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The required contacts are then made via the foreign affairs ministry and its overseas counterparts.
"The existing situation is oftentimes quite long and time-consuming and results in prolonged delays in our investigations," says Green. "With this new task force, the process should flow much faster and we will be able to bring people to justice in a much shorter time."
While describing last week's arrest of 27-year-old Yowo Senhi Morle and his 48-year-old mother, Hazel Clarke, as a major breakthrough in efforts to cripple the illicit network, Green says the arrest was just the tip of the iceberg as some masterminds were still at large.
major players
"There are still many major players out there, but, hopefully, with this new task force, we will be able to bring them down," states Green. "We have already arrested several of these major players. Some are before the courts locally, while others have been extradited to the US and are facing the courts there."
The police have labelled Morle, whose assets include houses, luxury cars and substantial bank accounts in excess of J$40 million, as one of the brains behind the lottery scam. According to the police, he collected US$440,000 from one individual, who was conned into believing that he had won a lottery sweepstake in Australia.
adrian.frater@gleanerjm.com
Lotto 'scamline'
2005 (June) - News broke that several Montego Bay communities were awash with cash from a scheme by which illicitly obtained personal data were used to con American citizens into sending money as processing fees to local 'scammers', who had fooled them into believing they had won a lottery.
2006 (December) - Lynda Langford, country operations manager at Montego Bay's Affiliated Computer Services, told a Gleaner Editor's Forum that the e-fraud component of the scam was negatively impacting business and could result in the company pulling out of Jamaica, which would result in the loss of some 140 jobs.
2006 (December) - Two police constables were arrested in Montego Bay in connection with the lottery scam. They reportedly confiscated $97,000 from persons involved in the lottery scam.
2007 (February) - Operation Kingfish raid Granville, Bogue Village and Westgate Hills, in the Montego Bay area, arresting 32 persons and seizing $1 million in cash, nine high-end motor cars, cellular phones, computers and documents.
2007 (February) - Three men and a woman arrested in Achovy, St James. Several documents bearing the names and telephone numbers of persons in the United States were seized.
2007 (October) - A New Jersey grandmother, identified as 72-year-old Ann Mowle, committed suicide after she was reportedly conned out of her life savings of US$248,000 by a Jamaican scam artiste.
2007 (November) - A team of local police investigators travel to the US to interview victims of the illicit scam in an intelligence/evidence-gathering mission.
2008 (April) - A 28-year-old man has been jailed after the seizure of documents, including a copy of a US$10-million cheque that was being sent by courier services to a US destination to an unsuspecting victim of the illicit lottery scam.
