Jason Dean Brown, Wire Fraud, North Carolina 2014

North Carolina Couple Plead Guilty to Sweepstakes Scam

A North Carolina couple, Jessica Anne Brown and her husband Jason Dean Brown, have pleaded guilty to defrauding hundreds of elderly Americans through an offshore sweepstakes scheme.

The scheme, which operated from November 2004 through March 2013, involved the Browns and their co-conspirators placing telephone calls to U.S. residents, many of whom were elderly, and falsely informing them that they had won a substantial cash prize in a sweepstakes.

The victims were told that in order to receive the prize, they had to send money to Costa Rica for a purported refundable insurance fee. After receiving the fee, the Browns and their co-conspirators contacted the victims again, and falsely informed them that the prize amount had increased, either because of a clerical error or because another prize winner was disqualified, and therefore the victims had to send additional money to pay for new purported fees, duties and insurance to receive the now larger sweepstakes prize.

The attempts to collect additional money from the victims continued until a victim either ran out of money or discovered the fraudulent nature of the scheme. To mask that they were calling from Costa Rica, the Browns and their co-conspirators utilized VoIP phones that displayed a (202) area code, giving victims the false impression that the calls were coming from Washington, D.C. The Browns often falsely claimed that they were calling on behalf of a U.S. federal agency to lure victims into a false sense of security.

The defendants admitted that, along with their co-conspirators, they were responsible for causing more than $840,000 in losses to hundreds of United States citizens. Jason Dean Brown, 41, formerly of Burleson, Texas, pleaded guilty on July 30, 2014, to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, the Federal Trade Commission, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations Miami Office. This case is being prosecuted by Senior Litigation Counsel Patrick Donley and Trial Attorney William Bowne of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.

Jessica Anne Brown, 39, of Greensboro, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to the same charges on the same date. Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date. The couple’s crimes have left hundreds of elderly Americans financially devastated, and the community is still reeling from the effects of their deceitful actions.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/two-north-carolina-residents-plead-guilty-defrauding-elderly-through-offshore-sweepstakes