Duped ‘lottery winners’ swindled out of $460,000, feds say. Accused scammer gets prison

A man with a leadership role in a fraudulent telemarketing and money laundering organization based out of Canada has been sentenced to prison for his role in a $1.3 million lottery scam, according to federal officials.

He and six co-defendants are accused of targeting “elderly victims in the United States, including those living in central Pennsylvania,” according to a May 9 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Specifically, 72-year-old Itcace Abramovici is accused of swindling more than $460,000 from at least 17 people tricked into believing they had won the lottery or a sweepstakes.

Now he will spend 30 months in prison followed by a year of supervised release on a charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, officials say. Abramovici, of Montreal, Quebec, was also ordered to pay his victims back the full $461,886.49.

His defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News on May 10.

Authorities say Abramovici and his partners told “prospective victims that they had won a substantial amount of money in a lottery or sweepstakes and then directed those victims to send money in order to obtain their winnings.”

The victims would make payments to cover supposed “taxes, customs fees, processing fees, and legal and insurance fees” but never saw any money in return, according to the news release.

The scheme lasted from about May 2011 through October 2013, according to court records. The fraudulently-obtained “fees” were then used for “personal enrichment.”

The first co-conspirator was sentenced to time served and about $7,000 in restitution in July 2019, records show.

Three other Canadian men involved in the “bogus sweepstakes scam” were sentenced to prison in April 2020, according to an earlier news release. Those three men were accused of defrauding 45 of an approximate 65 victims out of $302,045. Two of the men were sentenced to about nine months of prison, officials say, and one man was sentenced to 18 months in prison. They were also ordered to pay restitution.

A sixth defendant was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $435,985 in restitution in September 2020, according to court records.

The seventh partner has not been sentenced in connection to the scheme.

This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 8:42 AM with the headline "Duped ‘lottery winners’ swindled out of $460,000, feds say. Accused scammer gets prison."