250 charged in $500M elder fraud sweep

Twenty defendants in area, including Fort Pierce man.

What prosecutors call the largest elder fraud sweep in U.S. Department of Justice history has resulted in 250 defendants charged in schemes costing more than 1 million victims half a billion dollars, officials said — such as a fake lottery scam that cost an 87-year-old Boynton Beach man $6,000.

Among those targeted: Marvin Damian Coote, 36, of Fort Pierce. In a plea agreement involving mail and wire fraud charges, he received 41 months in prison and was ordered to pay $225,995.68 in restitution.

Co-conspirators phoned victims to notify them they had won a lottery that required them to send money in advance to secure their prize, prosecutors said. But there was no prize and the $6,000 from the elderly Boynton Beach man, for example, wound up in a bank account Coote controlled, documents in the case show.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called it an “unprecedented, coordinated action to protect elderly Americans from financial threats, both foreign and domestic.”

At least 20 defendants were based in South Florida, in cities including Miramar, Miami Gardens and Fort Pierce, and their schemes cost victims more than $100 million, officials said.

“We will bring to justice those who target the elderly and defraud them out of their life savings,” said Benjamin G. Greenberg, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Some charges have been resolved while others are ongoing. Coote was sentenced Dec. 1.

Fake lotteries are just one of several ploys targeted in the crackdown. Another is the grandparent scam. An 81-year-old woman in Iowa, for instance, wired $5,000 after a caller said her grandson was in jail and urgently needed his help, officials said.

Pleading guilty in that case was Tiffany Strobl, 38, of Ohio. She received 24 months in prison and was ordered to pay $9,548.25 in restitu - tion, prosecutors said.

Other cases involve advertising scams and the money-laundering of scam proceeds.

“We cannot allow our elderly and vulnerable citizens to continue to be the target of fraud schemes,” Greenberg said.