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KINGSTON, Jamaica – Eight people accused of defrauding U.S. citizens through amultinational lottery scam were arrested during raids of severalhomes on a single street in Jamaica's capital, police announcedThursday. A police statement said officers detained six males and two femalesduring the Wednesday night operation in Havendale, a middle-classcommunity at the foot of the mountains that tower above Kingston.They also seized nearly $150,000 in cash, jewelry, eightflat-screen television sets and five cars, including a BMW 5-seriesluxury sedan. Amid an ongoing crackdown on the Jamaican swindlers, authoritiessay numerous lottery scammers have recently fled their Montego Baybase and relocated to other communities across the Caribbeanisland. Police urged residents to "desist from renting houses tothem or assisting them in any way." Police Commissioner Owen Ellington has said that other scamsuspects arrested earlier this year have since been released onbail, frustrating investigators. Political leaders say they'reworried that the lottery scams will seriously damage Jamaica'sreputation. Ellington has also warned that more school-age youngsters inJamaica are becoming involved with the telemarketing scam rings,which target mostly the elderly, and Internet crimes. Jamaicanpolice did not reveal the ages of the eight people arrested inHavendale. At a Tuesday forum on national security in Montego Bay, where manyof the lottery scams are based, Ellington urged parents to takeresponsibility of their children. He said some parents are evencolluding with young suspects, which police officials say can be aslittle as 14 years old. "We have parents who have bank accounts, cars, houses and so onbought for them by their children who are under 18 years old,"Ellington said. A month ago, Jamaica announced a new government task force to fightthe lottery scams that have made the tourism-dependent Caribbeancountry a center for international telemarketing fraud. The scams started taking off in Jamaica roughly five years ago, atabout the same time the island became a regional leader in callcenters dedicated to customer service. Since 2006, many of thelegitimate call centers have been based in Montego Bay, and that'swhere many of the fraud rings have popped up. For the past three years, the Jamaican and U.S. governments havealready run a joint task force that has been trying to curb theschemes, but the problem has worsened. Even the most conservative estimates put the yearly take fromJamaican scams at $300 million, up from about $30 million in 2009.A U.S. Federal Trade Commission official believes the scams couldnow be bilking Americans out of $1 billion a year. Most incidents go unreported out of fear or embarrassment,according to the U.S. commission. Jamaica hasn't extradited a single scam suspect to the UnitedStates, but island police and U.S. Immigration and CustomsEnforcement authorities say some extraditions are in the pipeline. The schemes are so entrenched in Jamaica that some American policedepartments are warning vulnerable elderly residents to be wary ofcalls from Jamaica's 876 telephone code. I am an expert from ipl-beautymachine.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Oxygen Facial Machine , IPL Beauty Machine Manufacturer, RF Beauty Machine,and more.
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