‘Honey, sell your house’ - Relentless Jamaican fraudster jailed after US$22m jackpot lie bankrupts American retiree

 Jamaican lottery scammer Roshard Carty urged a 73-year-old American woman to sell her house and send him the proceeds after she complained in early 2021 that she had run out of money paying the endless “taxes and fees” she believed were required to claim a supposed US$22-million jackpot.

To persuade her further, 34-year-old Carty, who was living in Manchester at the time, told the retiree – whom he frequently addressed as ‘Hun’, ‘Honey’, or ‘Love’ – that he would “give her one of his houses”, according to a plea agreement he signed and court records filed in the United States (US).

 In April 2021, the woman, whose identity was not disclosed by American authorities, sold her house in Washington and deposited US$448,000 into her bank account before sending the cash to Carty.

 Months before that, in late 2020, the scammer had also convinced the elderly woman to borrow US$130,000 against her home after she complained that she did not have “that kind of money” to cover what he described as additional costs to collect her ‘prize’.

 She borrowed US$150,000 against her home in October 2021, according to the court documents seen by The Sunday Gleaner.

 “Between August 2020 and December 2020, she sent various individuals US$155,085 in cash and MoneyGram transfers at Carty’s direction,” prosecutors revealed in a sentencing memorandum filed in court.

Court documents revealed that in 2022, Carty purchased property in Cedar Grove, Mandeville, where he intended to build a house, while also noting that US authorities do not have a complete account of how he used the proceeds from his fraudulent scheme.

 The documents revealed, too, that evidence from Carty’s iCloud account showed that “he was spending money on nice clothes and jewellery”.

 He was sentenced last Thursday to three years in prison by a judge in the US District Court in Tacoma, Washington, after pleading guilty to wire fraud charges in February this year, the US Department of Justice disclosed.

 Carty was arrested in Jamaica on August 21 last year and extradited to the US in October.

 Evidence in the case detailed how the Jamaican, posing as Publisher’s Clearinghouse Manager ‘James Preston’, was relentless in pursuing the elderly woman after she expressed scepticism about the US$22-million jackpot and a brand-new Mercedes-Benz motor car.

 She expressed reservations, noting that she had not participated in any lottery and had not received any notification in the mail about her ‘winnings’.

 But days after he first telephoned her in August 2020, Carty again contacted the woman from a new telephone number with a 360 area code – the same area code as the community where she resided.

 “Carty falsely told Victim 1 that his company flew him to Washington on a private jet. In reality, Carty created a new number using a voice- over Internet protocol service, … which enabled him to hide his true identity,” according to the plea agreement he signed.

 He initially requested US$60,000 to cover a “release fee, insurance, and a claim fee” as well as “US$3,000 for the FBI” – a reference to the US Federal Bureau of Investigations – and directed the victim to withdraw the cash in small amounts from different bank accounts.

 Between 2021 and 2024, Carty bombarded the woman with calls, emails, and text messages, peddling lies about why he needed more money to enable her to collect the fictitious jackpot. They exchanged more than 2,000 text messages over the four-year period, prosecutors revealed.

 For example, in early 2021, he asked the woman to send thousands of dollars that he claimed was needed to cover a US$275,000 judgment by the US Internal Revenue Service against Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

 In other instances, he claimed the money she sent had either been lost or stolen, and in one case, there was an “unexpected” Customs fee of US$250,000.

 The elderly woman was hospitalised for several months in 2022 after Carty told her she needed to pay US$160,000 in Customs duty to claim her ‘prize’, but that did not stop him from calling and “pretending to check on her well-being”.

 After her release from hospital, she blocked Carty from contacting her, but that did not deter him.

 As an example, in May 2024, he sent two trucks from two different companies to the elderly woman’s new address, falsely claiming that he was her son and that she needed her car towed.

 In another instance, the Jamaican had pizza delivered to the woman’s home one hour before a cab driver knocked on her door indicating that her son ‘Preston’ had ordered a cab for her.

 “Carty’s conduct here shows he is relentless, callous, and has an aptitude for deception. He is unlikely to be deterred by the reality that his conduct left people like the Victim One destitute,” said Neil Floyd, first assistant US attorney for the Western District of Washington.

“Mr Carty relentlessly and cruelly manipulated and intimidated his elderly victim to deprive her of her life savings for his own profit,” said special agent Mike Harrington of the FBI’s Seattle Field Office.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com