Two St. Louis residents pleaded guilty to federal charges Monday and admitted bilking the elderly in a Jamaican lottery scam, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that in the scam, which ran between November 2009 and March 2012, a Jamaican man named Nollis Hudson, 33, called retirees and lied, claiming that they'd won the Jamaican lottery and needed to pay taxes on the prize. Using the personal and financial information that the victims provided, Hudson changed their Social Security benefits so that his co-conspirators could steal the benefits, prosecutors said.
Those co-conspirators, Andre Depass, 32, and Jayneise Hampton, 24, kept 20 percent of the proceeds and wired the rest to Hudson, prosecutors said.
Hudson has been charged but not arrested and is considered a fugitive, prosecutors said.
On Monday, Depass and Hampton pleaded guilty to two felony counts of wire fraud, one felony count of mail fraud and one felony count of conspiracy to defraud. Depass also pleaded guilty to one felony count of identity theft and a felony count of possession of 15 unauthorized access devices.
Additional Story: http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/329465/3/2-St-Louis-men-plead-guilty-in-lottery-scam
