Too good to be true: Feds say elderly victims conned in international lotto scam

The good news came in the form of a phone call in April 2013: The California woman who answered was a finalist in a sweepstakes run by General Motors and an insurance company, and she’d won $4 million.

All she had to do was pay the state and federal taxes and an insurance fee for a total of $44,000 and mail the checks to “Steve Williams” at an address in Washington state.

You know how the rest of this goes. The victim, identified only as “S.S.,” never saw a dime of the alleged prize money.

Instead, federal officials said Thursday the ploy was part of an international con game targeting older victims with promises of easy money. All told, 30 victims over the age of 55 lost more than $1.4 million in the scam, court documents say, which began in 2012 and was revealed with the unsealing of an indictment Thursday afternoon in federal court in Sacramento.

The 41-count indictment charges Alexander Franco Gutierrez, 40, of Medellin, Colombia; Eduardo Cartagena, 43, of Medellin, Colombia; and Oldaim Lopes, 39, of Calgary, Canada, with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott’s office said Gutierrez and Cartagena were arrested Thursday in Medellin, Colombia, while Lopes has not been detained but is in Canada and being informed of the charges. Gutierrez could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted, while his co-defendants could face up to 20 years.

The case stems from arrests that began in 2013 and used alleged participants to help lead agents to other suspects.

Victims were told outlandish tales – one was told they had won $1 million in a sweepstakes affiliated with the Coca-Cola Co. and that they could tell no one because of confidentiality requirements, court documents say.

That victim recalled a representative from the “lottery” going “ballistic” when she confided the news of her good luck to her son. Some victims were told to lie to their family members or bank tellers if asked why they were writing large checks to mail out, federal officials say.

One woman was told her $7.4 million in winnings would be hand-delivered to her on a Friday, “but they never arrived,” court papers say.