2 Investigators: 'Jamaican Lottery' Preys Upon Seniors
(CBS) -- Hundreds of millions of dollars lost, and the amount is still climbing for one of the oldest and most lucrative scams -- the Jamaican lottery.
And the number of victims keeps increasing, despite raids and arrests by a Jamaican organized crime task force and assistance from U.S. Postal Inspectors and the FBI.
CBS 2's Pam Zekman reports.
In a recent raid, Jamaica's special organized crime task force shut down one of the many lottery boiler rooms that preys on unsuspecting Americans. And they found the typical tools of the trade: cell phones, lists of phone numbers and lots of cash.
The scammers target seniors, like a woman who agreed to talk about what happened if her identity was not disclosed. For her, it all started with a letter bearing an authentic-looking -- but fake – Publisher's Clearing House logo claiming she won $2 million.
She says she thought: "This is just going to set me up for the rest of my life."
To claim the prize, she was instructed to send $7,390.68 for processing fees. She followed instructions.
"This was a very smooth-talking man," she says.
U.S. Postal Inspector Kevin Freeman has worked for months here and in Jamaica on lottery scam cases.
"At no time will a victim ever receive any winnings from this Jamaican lottery fraud," Freeman warns.
"If I had to quantify it," Freeman adds, "Hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, have been lost to this."
For 85-year-old Virginia Zitko, it all started about a year ago with a call from Jamaica to her Romeoville home saying she'd won $12 million -- and a Mercedes.
"I did believe him," Zitko says. "I did trust him. That's why I sent the money all the time."
He instructed her to send $1,000 for insurance. He charged $10,000 on her credit card and told her how to take out a $4,400 car title loan-- at 110 percent interest -- to help pay the so-called required fees that kept mounting.
Zitko's total losses are estimated by her family at about $20,000.
"He's always two steps ahead and he plays on her emotions and we can't stop it," her daughter, Val Zitko, says.
Val Zitko tried changing her mother's phone number. Her mother changed it back. She changed it again. And her mother gave the number to the scammer she knew as "Michael." Her mother's credit line was reduced, but she continued to send money she got from Social Security and other sources, saying she just wanted to leave her winnings to her children.
"I want so much to give it to them," Virginia Zitko says. Now, she says, "I don't have it to give to them."
Her daughter says the stress of the ordeal has left her frustrated. "We don't know what else to do. We feel like we've lost part of our mom to this scam person."
Freeman, the postal inspector, says the worst cases he's worked on involved on man who lost $600,000. In another case, "They'd taken so much money from him that he did not have enough money to buy food for himself to eat," he says.
When Zekman tried calling Zitko's scammer to ask some questions, he hung up on her.
"Do you realize this was all a scam?" Zekman asked Virginia Zitko.
"Yes. But I didn't want to believe it," she replied.
A spokesperson for Publisher's Clearinghouse says they are working with law enforcement to shut these operations down.
Meanwhile, experts say, don't fall for any prize offer that requires you to pay a fee up front. And anyone with elderly parents should make sure they don't fall for the same type of scam. At some point, that may require getting legally appointed as their guardian.
