Jamaican lottery scams often start as 876 calls

Jamaican lottery scams have been victimizing unwary Americans for more than ten years. It is estimated that Jamaican scam artists operating phony lotteries steal more than three hundred million dollars a year from Americans. Often it is the elderly who are targeted. Jamaican authorities have been attempting, albeit unsuccessfully, to crack down on this crime for a few years, but American law enforcement, until now, has been stymied in trying to take legal action against the perpetrators of this type of fraud. But last week, Damion Bryan Barrett, who was indicted by an American federal court in 2012, became the first Jamaican citizen to be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges related to the Jamaican lottery scam. He has pleaded not guilty to 38 counts of fraud.