Twenty-five Canadian suspects are charged with bilking American elders of $21 million as part of a “grandparent scam,” according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday.
All 25, said to have operated out of Montreal and resided there or elsewhere in the province of Quebec, were charged with wire fraud in a case alleging they were part of a tech-savvy operation that victimized hundreds of U.S. retirees, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for Vermont.
Thomas Demeo, special agent in charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation in Boston, said the defendants are part of a “transnational criminal enterprise with the sole intent of defrauding hundreds of retirees of their life savings by preying on their emotions and deceiving them into thinking that their loved ones were in peril.”
Twenty-three of the 25 suspects were arrested in Canada on Tuesday, according to the statement. Two remain at large, though the statement didn’t indicate where they are believed to be.
Prosecutors said defendants used a narrative known to law enforcement as the “grandparent scam”: A grandparent is called and urged to send thousands of dollars to bail out a teenage or adult grandchild who was in a vehicle collision and then arrested. As part of the story, victims are told the grandchild’s case is under a strict gag order, and they’re prohibited from telling anyone about their request for money, prosecutors said.
Investigators found victims in 40 states, from Alabama to Wyoming, according to the indictment and statement. While federal prosecutors estimated the operation’s earnings at $21 million, it wasn’t clear what individual victims lost.
The federal grand jury indictment filed under seal Feb. 20 in Vermont, where some of the victims live, includes an additional charge of money laundering for five of the suspects, who allegedly tried to hide the origins of their gains, the document stated.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney in Vermont did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
U.S. prosecutors said some of the defendants were making calls to potential victims in Vermont when they were found at Montreal-area call centers in June of last year during raids by Canadian law enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s statement indicated the operation had been active since 2021.
Five of the suspects, including the two who have yet to be arrested, helped manage the call centers, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.
The indictment alleged all the defendants were part of a sophisticated operation, with some specializing in cold calling potential victims and, if they got traction, handing the call off to “closers” who would try to get the potential victims to send money or have the cash ready for pickup.
The calls were based on spreadsheets detailing information on potential victims, including names, addresses, phone numbers and estimated household income, according to the indictment.
The operation relied on contemporary technology that was used to mask calls coming from Quebec so that they appeared to come from the United States, prosecutors said in the indictment.
The alleged scammers frequently changed their phone numbers by switching the SIM cards on phones they used, prosecutors said.
The operation had associates posing as bail bond firm workers pick up cash from victims’ homes, prosecutors said in the indictment, but sometimes a victim was in an area out of reach. That’s when the defendants allegedly used ride-hailing services that offer pickup and delivery to collect the money.
Other times, they would have victims mail the money to a home they had identified as abandoned through searches on real estate websites, according to the indictment.
And when it came time to get the gains to Canada, prosecutors said in Tuesday’s statement, the suspects sometimes used cryptocurrency in an effort to obscure the source of the money.
Prosecutors will seek forfeiture of the allegedly stolen funds, according to the indictment.
The five defendants who face charges of wire fraud and money laundering face the possibility of 40 years behind bars if successfully convicted, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement. The 20 who face a single charge, that of wire fraud, would face 20 years, it said.
The defendants have not appeared in federal court, according to court records, and it’s unclear whether they’ve retained lawyers. The federal public defender’s office for Vermont did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
