13 charged with operating $5M scheme that targeted older adults across US
Thirteen individuals have been charged in connection with operating scam call centers that raked in over $5 million by defrauding 400 older adults across the nation, federal prosecutors said.
The call centers based in the Dominican Republic targeted older adults in the United States, the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, announced in news released on Aug. 12. Scammers obtained the money by tricking victims into believing that their grandchildren or close family members were in trouble and desperately needed money, a scheme the FBI calls a grandparent scam.
The average age of their hundreds of victims was 84, prosecutors said.
"Their goal," according to Leah B. Foley, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, "was to trick our parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends into handing over their life savings on false pretenses. And they succeeded."
Of the 13 people charged in federal court in Massachusetts, nine are in custody, according to the Department of Justice. Two of the suspected scammers are at large in the United States and two in the Dominican Republic, Christina Sterling, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said at a news conference on Aug. 12.
Charges against the 13 include conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy, prosecutors said. The suspected scammers face potentially decades in prison if found guilty.
At least one has already pleaded guilty.
'Ringleader' in custody
In addition to the FBI, the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs participated in the investigation, as well as Dominican agencies, including the Dominican National Police. Dominican authorities said the arrests were the result of a two-year investigation.
Among the nine in custody is Oscar Manuel Castanos Garcia, the chief operator of the call centers. Sterling, the U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson, described him as a "ringleader" and said he was arrested on Aug. 12 in the Dominican Republic.
Castanos Garcia, 33, is suspected of directing scammers to follow a script in their calls that would lead the victim to believe that their loved one was making a call from jail after a car accident and needed money to post bail, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. He operated call centers out of residential homes in Santiago de los Caballeros and Puerto Plata.
"I was granted a 5-minute phone call, and I called you because I know you can help me," a script shared by the Department of Justice reads. "Please, promise that you will keep this between us until I get out, I am ashamed about this."
The script directed callers to hang up by telling the victim, "I love you."
Callers obtained information about their victims through the dark web, according to a federal affidavit. Castanos Garcia and a few others were arrested in the Dominican Republic and are expected to be extradited.
Money went towards 'luxury purchases'
The grandparent fraud schemes depend on several operators playing key roles, from "openers" who make the initial call to older adults to "runners" who collect the cash from victims and launder it back to the Dominican Republic, according to Justice Department officials.
Operators kept a "scoreboard" at call centers showing how much money each "opener" and "closer" pairing made, prosecutors said. The closer is responsible for making the second call to victims. In the Massachusetts case, operators posed as public defenders who told victims how much "bail money" they had to pay.
Sometimes, call center operators would call back multiple times to demand greater sums of money, making claims including that a baby had been lost in the car accident, Justice Department officials said. The money furnished lavish lifestyles for call center operators.
Castanos Garcia spent the money on "upgrades to his home and luxury purchases," including a boat, court documents said. Photographs included in a federal affidavit show Castanos Garcia sitting in a hot tub aboard a yacht.
Growing scheme
The grandparent scam case in Massachusetts, which included at least 50 victims, is the latest in the growing field of elder fraud. FBI officials announced in June that older adults across the United States reported nearly $4.89 billion in losses due to fraud schemes, including grandparent scams.
The sum represents a 43% increase in losses from 2023, according to the FBI.
According to data from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, there were 147,127 complaints of elder fraud in 2024, a 46% increase from 2024, the FBI said.
Among recent schemes, a federal grand jury indicted a man from the Dominican Republic in March in connection with a scheme to defraud five people of $50,000, USA TODAY previously reported. Luis Alfonso Bisono Rodriguez, a citizen of the Caribbean nation living in Cleveland, played all the parts of the scam from opener to runner. He pleaded not guilty in July.
"Elder fraud is a growing problem and a shameful crime," Kimberly Milka, acting special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston Division, said in a release about elder fraud. "Not only does it rob an already vulnerable population of their sense of security, but it leaves them with devastating financial losses."
Older adults are targeted because they are often seen as more trusting and also less likely to report being scammed, federal officials said.
People can report elder fraud scams by emailing USAMA.VictimAssistance@usdoj.gov, calling 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), or online at the FBI's IC3 Elder Fraud Complaint Center.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
8 minutes ago
- Forbes
FBI Issues New Bitcoin And Crypto ‘Red Flag' Fraud Alert
It's an easy lure. Attackers use 'social media and other messaging platforms,' to pose as lawyers, offering to help anyone who has lost crypto to scams recover their funds. These fake lawyers claim to have case files from the FBI and other agencies. Victims are then defrauded again, with more money lost to these malicious recovery schemes. The bureau first warned about this scam in 2023 and then again in 2024. Now there's a third public advisory, which 'provides additional red flag indicators and due diligence measures to help victims who have been in contact with fictitious law firms.' Unsurprisingly, these frauds target vulnerable citizens, 'particularly the elderly,' and 'exploit victims' emotional state and financial need to recover funds.' Some of the attacks impersonate legitimate law firms adding to their credibility. Specific red flags to watch for include stating affiliation or official partnership with government or regulatory agencies. 'There are no law firms which are officially authorized partners of U.S. Government agencies,' the FBI confirms. These frauds may also list 'fictitious government or regulatory entities,' albeit much of the documentation and references they use are real. More pointedly, scammers need to be paid and will 'request payment in cryptocurrency or prepaid gift cards' or ask victims to open new overseas bank accounts for the recovered funds. They will 'say that payment of bank fees is required to verify identity and ownership to withdraw funds' or 'send payment to a third-party entity (i.e., xyz trading company) for the supposed purposes of maintaining secrecy and safety.' Set out here in black and white, it's easy to see these scams for what they are. But for more vulnerable investors or for those emotionally affected by the original thefts, it's all too easy to jump at the chance of any form of recovery. The FBI suggests a "Zero Trust" model, which means trust no one and assume everything is a scam until proven otherwise. 'Every request should be verified.' There is other advice to confirm law licenses and to keep records of contacts. But you should never respond to unsolicited posts such as this, which means never getting that far. 'Be wary of advertisements for cryptocurrency recovery services,' the FBI says. And 'if an unknown individual contacts you and claims to be able to recover stolen crypto, do not release any financial or personal identifying information and do not send money.' With billions of dollars lost to online crypto hacks and scams, there are plenty of victims to target. The fact there have now been three FBI warnings on this highlights the risks.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
A 500-year-old receipt for supplies to conquer an empire is returned to Mexico
The FBI said that it returned the document Wednesday, and that no one would face prosecution in the theft because the document had changed hands many times since it vanished. The document 'outlines the payment of pesos of common gold for expenses in preparation for discovery of the spice lands,' Special Agent Jessica Dittmer, a member of the FBI's Art Crime Team, said in a statement, 'so it really gives a lot of flavor as to the planning and preparation for unchartered territory back then.' Those 'spice lands' were eastern and southeastern Asia. European explorers sailed west in the hopes of finding a faster route to the region, and instead landed in the Americas. Advertisement In 1993, while archivists at the General Archive of the Nation in Mexico were creating microfilms of their collection of documents signed by Cortés, they discovered that 15 pages of the manuscript were missing. The archive used a distinctive wax numbering system from 1985 to 1986, which helped FBI investigators to authenticate the stolen page, the FBI said. The archivists had noted which numbered pages had been stolen and had recorded the precise rip pattern in the torn pages. Advertisement 'This 1527 manuscript, signed by Hernán Cortés, captures a pivotal moment when the Pacific routes were opening and New Spain sought to connect the Americas with Asia,' a spokesperson from the Mexican Embassy in Washington said in a statement Thursday. 'Linked to an expedition to the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands, in present-day Indonesia), it is part of the legacy of the Hospital de Jesús, founded by Cortés.' Cortés founded the hospital in 1524. Investigators said they believed that the archivists' careful accounting would help them find the pages that were still missing. They said that they had added this missing page to the National Stolen Art File, an FBI database of artworks and cultural artifacts known to be stolen. Though they did not detail their investigative process, they said that open-source research had revealed that the document was in the United States, though they did not say who had it. Last year, Mexico asked that the Art Crime Team help to search for this particular page, the FBI said. The New York City Police Department, the U.S. Justice Department, the Mexican government and the FBI's office in Atlanta took part in the investigation, officials said. The document, dated Feb. 20, 1527, contains a full accounting of the logistical details related to Cortés' journey to what would eventually become the territory of New Spain, which included present-day Mexico and parts of the United States, Central America and the Caribbean, Dittmer said. New Spain, a colonial territory of the Spanish Empire, was founded in the early 16th century and existed until Mexico declared its independence in 1821. 'Pieces like this are considered protected cultural property and represent valuable moments in Mexico's history, so this is something that the Mexicans have in their archives for the purpose of understanding history better,' Dittmer said in a statement. Advertisement Cortés reached the shores of present-day Mexico in 1519, aiming to overthrow the emperor Montezuma in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which is now Mexico City. The Aztecs initially beat back the Spanish invasion, but Cortés made alliances with local groups that opposed the Aztecs and returned in 1521. His second siege was successful, and he took over the city after burning it to ruins. The Spanish ruler, Charles V, named Cortés the governor of New Spain in 1522. Cortés and the Spanish settlers brought with them diseases like smallpox, which ripped through the native population. Within five years, disease had killed as many as 15 million Aztecs. 'The United States, for better or for worse, is one of the largest, if not the largest, consumer of art and antiquities,' said Veh Bezdikian, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in New York. This is the second Cortés document that the FBI has returned to Mexico in recent years. In 2022, the FBI discovered another page of the purchase order signed by Cortés that had made its way to private auction blocks across the United States. The Art Crime Team is still looking for other missing pages from Mexico's national archives.
Epoch Times
2 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Man Charged With Throwing Sandwich at Federal Agent Was DOJ Worker
The man, whose name has not been released, has been fired, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Federal and local law enforcement officers investigate a suspect's vehicle on South Capitol Street in Washington on Aug. 11, 2025. Federal and local law enforcement officers investigate a suspect's vehicle on South Capitol Street in Washington on Aug. 11, man charged with throwing a sandwich at a federal agent on Aug. 13 was an employee of the Department of Justice (DOJ), according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The man, whose name has not been publicly released, has been fired, she said. 'If you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you. I just learned that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice—NO LONGER. Not only is he FIRED, he has been charged with a felony,' Bondi posted on X. Story continues below advertisement President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to Washington and taken over the city's Metropolitan Police Department. It shows a man standing across from a law enforcement officer and throwing a Subway sandwich at him, then fleeing the scene. The man was caught following a foot chase. 'The @FBI arrested this individual last night. He has been charged with felony assault on a federal officer,' FBI Director Kash Patel arrested this individual last night. He has been charged with felony assault on a federal officer,' FBI Director Kash Patel said on X, accompanied by a video of the incident. Bondi said the incident exemplifies resistance inside the Justice Department to the Trump administration's agenda. Story continues below advertisement 'This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ,' she wrote on X. 'You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.' There were 45 arrests made in Washington on the evening of Aug. 13, according to Patel, including the former DOJ employee. 'The FBI and our partners made 45 arrests—29 immigration-related, 16 tied to the violent crime surge, and 3 firearm seizures,' Patel wrote on X. The president has instructed federal law enforcement to patrol the nation's capital for 24 hours, seven days a week. The federal government can control the city's police department for 30 days. Congress must approve any extension. Trump said an extension will be needed. Charges included illegal firearms, possession of child sex abuse material, drug trafficking, and assault on a federal officer. There were also fugitive apprehensions. 'We're going to be asking for extensions on that—long-term extensions,' he said on Aug. 13. 'You can't have 30 days.' 'This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back,' Trump said at a press conference. 'We're taking it back under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States.' Trump announced on Aug. 11 a takeover of Washington's local police department and the deployment of National Guard personnel to the city. Story continues below advertisement He said Bondi is 'taking command of the Metropolitan Police Department' and that Drug Enforcement Administration leader Terry Cole is 'designated as the interim federal commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Department.' The National Guard does not have the authority to arrest people, but they can detain them until law enforcement arrives. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has criticized Trump's moves, calling them 'unsettling.'
