Hundreds of scam letter conmen held in crackdown
CONMEN who targeted British pensioners with millions of letter frauds are facing court action after a Daily Mail investigation.
More than 200 scammers have been charged or served with court orders in a joint action by US and Canadian police using evidence uncovered by this newspaper’s investigations unit.
One of those facing legal action, Andrew John Thomas, was caught on camera by an undercover Mail reporter boasting that he was a ‘proud whore’ who used his ‘beautiful talent to sell this s**t to people who don’t need it’. Another is his associate Patrick Fraser.
The evidence gathered by the Mail is described in court papers as proof of the pair’s ‘intent to defraud’. Police believe they may have run hundreds of millions of pounds worth of frauds, sending four million letters a year.
They are understood to have told their printing providers they valued having Royal Mail branding on their letters to dupe British victims into thinking they were genuine.
The developments will pile pressure on postage firms in the UK and on Royal Mail, which has launched a drive to stamp out scam letters in response to the Daily Mail’s investigation in October 2016.
We revealed how conmen were using Royal Mail’s bulk mail contracts with postal partners to target the elderly. In some cases they paid to use the Royal Mail logo.
Some of their letters conned vulnerable people, including dementia patients, into thinking they had won a prize they could claim by sending money. Officials believe up to £10billion is lost to such scams each year.
Court papers filed in New York by the US Department of Justice on Thursday cite evidence gathered by the Daily Mail that Thomas and Fraser were directors of a mail fraud scheme to defraud the elderly.
They used eight shell companies, rented mailboxes and crossborder couriers to hide their activities, the US Department of Justice alleges.
The pair have now been banned from sending further mass mailings pending an investigation by the department. Criminal charges have not yet been brought against them, but sources said they could later be charged with mail fraud.
The hundreds of scammers targeted by the action are accused of defrauding more than a million elderly people globally out of more than £600million. More than 200 have been charged and civil actions brought against dozens more.
The Daily Mail’s exposé came after reporters infiltrated a conference at a ski resort in Canada where scammers met to trade ‘ suckers lists’ with names and addresses of those considered susceptible to fraud.
They boasted of ‘ripping off suggestible’ victims and of using Royal Mail’s discounted bulk postage rates to send letters to the UK. This also allowed them to have Royal Mail branding on envelopes.
Royal Mail said last night it was ‘working with industry partners and law enforcement agencies to tackle this issue even more vigorously’.
Since its crackdown in 2016, more than three million fraud letters have been stopped before delivery.