Top lottery scam crook detained in Jamaica

Jamaica’s reputation as a centre for lottery fraudsters may be positively changed as the extensive police drive against the fraudsters on the Caribbean island continues to disrupt fraud rings and send crooks scurrying for cover.

Over the past few weeks a special police task force has been raiding premises, seizing ill-gotten gains and information and charging Jamaicans involved in various lottery scams, directed mainly against US citizens .

One of the ring’s masterminds was arrested, along with 27 others in the latest sweep, police spokesman Superintendent Leon Clunis told the Jamaican Observer over the weekend. The mastermind, a well-known political activist whom the police did not identify, was picked up in a raid on an upmarket residential complex, with police seizing his luxury motor vehicle – one of eleven seized on the same day in other police raids.

“It was a very successful operation,” Superintendent Clunis told the newspaper said, revealing that the man’s brother was held during a similar raid.

Clunis said that that the operations started at about 5:30 in the morning and saw the lottery scam task force, working in tandem with other police units, carrying out raids in several communities around the island.

“At one of the premises, which is a major complex, we found a lady with sheets of leads and other stuff, including vegetable matter, which she disowned. These things were found in her room but she disowned them,” Superintendent Clunis told journalists.

“Notwithstanding, we took her into custody and seized her vehicle,” Clunis said.