Lottery scammer gets prison for swindling $1.2 million from elderly Connecticut retiree

The leader of a ring of Jamaican swindlers, whose victims included an elderly Mystic man who lost more than $1 million, was sentenced Friday to nearly six years in prison.

Federal prosecutors described 35-year old Stieve Fernandez, part of a flourishing, underground network of so-called lottery scammers in Jamaica, as a “callous” thief. As is typical of the scammers, they said he looted the life savings of vulnerable senior citizens. He spent the money on a new home in Jamaica and a vineyard in Argentina.

Fenandez named two dogs he kept at the Argentine vineyard after the Mystic victim and his wife, bragging to an associate that “they were the people whose money had paid for them,” the prosecution said.

Fernandez was accused of buying “lead sheets” containing the names and telephone numbers of potential scam victims and gulling victims into believing they had won big foreign lotteries or sweepstakes. Before they could collect their winnings, Fernandez persuaded his victims that they had to pay what would turn out to be enormous fees to cover taxes, insurance, handling charges and other expenses.

U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley sentenced Fernandez to 71 months, the top limit of the advisory sentencing range in federal court.

Fernandez first contacted the Mystic man, whose identity is protected as a crime victim, in 2015. By 2018, Fernandez and the associates with whom he worked had stolen $1.2 million, which the victim was instructed to distribute through postal money orders, investment account transfers and through the purchase and transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and silver bars.

Federal prosecutors said they are persuaded that Fernandez participated in similar lottery frauds against as many as four other elderly victims, stealing another $684,500 and trying to steal an additional $222,000.

Fernandez, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to fraud and conspiracy charges, is accused of working with a girlfriend who lived in Canada, a cousin who was for a time in Florida and two un-indicted co-conspirators, at least one of whom lived in Canada.

The cousin, Horace Crooks, has been sentenced to a year in prison. Girlfriend Minique Morris has yet to be sentenced.

Fernandez, who was born in Lucea in Hanover Parish, argued in court that he is “a simple farmer” and “devoted family man” who “was brought up in the violence of gangland Jamaica.” He said his younger brother was “stabbed more than sixty times, shot more than thirty times and set on fire because he could not pay extortion money.” At another point Fernandez said he was “captured and tortured by a local gang.”

He said he is self-taught in “computer repair, audio engineering and Bonsai art.”

Prosecutors said Fernandez tried to insulate himself from detection in a variety of ways. While speaking with his Mystic victims, he assumed an American accent and phony names, including “Damian Jackson,” “Mister Jackson,” “Jesse Jackson,” and “Huckleberry Finn.”

He instructed victims to distribute money to his associates in a variety of ways and then, by circuitous means, to accounts he controlled.

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