Israeli lottery scamsters arrested

Seven people have been arrested in Israel for operating lottery scams and cheating elderly Americans out of millions of dollars. The Israeli lottery scammers were arrested following a joint investigation by the Israeli Police and the FBI, and are now facing extradition to face trial in the US.

The seven Israeli nationals are wanted men in the US for targeting and cheating elderly American citizens of over $2.5 million and following a ruling in the Jerusalem District Court yesterday the arrested men will be extradited to the US to face charges of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and can carry up to a 30 years prison sentence.

The lottery frauds allegedly chose their victims from date provided by list brokers in the US, who sold them the names and contact information of Americans who had entered lotteries and lottery sweepstakes. This organised lottery scam operation would involve a telephone call to the victims telling them that they were lottery winners and that they had won “substantial” cash prizes from lottery companies such as “Clearinghouse Sweepstakes” and “Consumers Clearinghouse.” After assessing the victims’ finances, wealthy people were then passed to other lottery scammers who were posing as attorneys from companies such as “Bernstein Schwartz,” “Bloomberg and Associates” and “Meyer Stevens”, who would instruct the unsuspecting lottery scam victims to wire funds to Israel, the US and Cyprus.

News about lottery scams is all too familiar but at least this particular news story will hopefully see justice served and will act as a warning to other would-be lottery scammers. It’s hardly surprising that people fell victim to such a well organised lottery scam, with the accused allegedly buying data from legitimate marketing companies and using it to defraud innocent people out of millions of dollars.

The sure way to avoid being a victim of lottery fraud is to never send money to claim a lottery prize. Any genuine lottery that you buy tickets for will never ask you to pay money to receive a prize and if you by your tickets here at Online Lotto you will also be notified of any winning tickets you have and certainly won’t be asked to send any money to claim you prizes.