Cpl. Kevin Watson, a member of a Jamaican agency comparable to the FBI, testified during Williams’ trial.
“We have been fighting this monster called lottery scams for three years and this is a significant step for both the Jamaican and U.S. governments,” said Watson, who helped found a lottery task force in late 2012.
Watson said a law passed there in 2013 has led to some 700 arrests and a 90 percent conviction rate of scammers.
In recent years, estimates by U.S. officials put the yearly take by the Jamaican fraudsters at $300 million, but some American authorities suspected the total was far higher. In 2012, C. Steven Baker, a Chicago-based director with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, told The Associated Press that Jamaica’s scammers could be bilking Americans out of $1 billion a year.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland did not set a sentencing date or the amount of restitution Williams must pay. Hovland told Williams that he would receive a “significantly lesser sentence” if he cooperated with federal investigators about other scammers.
“Obviously, you have some knowledge of the Jamaican lottery scam,” Hovland said.
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Associated Press writer David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica contributed to this report.
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