Twenty-five Canadians have been charged with being part of a scheme to defraud hundreds of seniors across the United States, according to U.S. federal prosecutors.
Of the 25 defendants named in an indictment unsealed Tuesday, 23 were arrested in Canada on Tuesday over their alleged involvement in the $21 million scam that targeted people in 46 states, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Vermont said in a statement. Prosecutors described the alleged scheme as a “grandparent scam.”
Between the summer of 2021 and June 4, 2024, the indictment said, the defendants deceived people into thinking that a relative – typically a grandchild – had been arrested after a car crash and needed money to post bail.
The defendants were involved in “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,” Thomas Demeo, acting special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation’s Boston field office, said in a statement.
Prosecutors accused the defendants of conspiring to defraud the victims “by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises” and in violation of U.S. wire fraud laws.
It was not immediately clear whether the defendants have lawyers. The Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Vermont and the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Vermont did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Wednesday.
Under the alleged scheme, scammers working in call centers in and around Montreal typically called elderly individuals and pretended to be a relative who had been arrested. In many cases, the indictment said, they told their victims that there was a “gag order” in place and they could not tell anyone about their relative’s arrest. The call was allegedly then passed to another individual, who was introduced as a lawyer for the victim’s relative.
If the victim agreed to provide cash, a person posing as a bail bondsman would come to their home to collect the money, which was then sent to Canada via financial transactions, often including cryptocurrency, that concealed the source of the money, the indictment said. In other cases, co-conspirators picked up money that the victims either sent using ride-hailing apps or mailed to vacant residences in the United States, where it was less likely to be intercepted, the prosecutors said.
To make the calls seem genuine, the indictment said, the defendants used an internet telephone provider that made it appear as though their calls were coming from inside the United States, and had access to personal information of elderly people in the United States, including their name, age, contact details and estimated household income.
It was not immediately clear how much scammers allegedly took from each of the victims. In some cases, the callers told the victims that the bail amount had increased in an attempt to obtain more money from them – a process that members of the group called “re-loads.” Members of the group also referred to a victim who gave them substantial sums of money as a “whale.”
If convicted, 20 of the defendants face up to 20 years in prison, while five others face up to 40, the prosecutors’ statement said. Those five – Gareth West, Usman Khalid, Andrew Tatto, Stephan Moskwyn and Ricky Ylimaki – were accused of managing the network of call centers in and around Montreal, from where the phone calls to the victims were made, and face an additional charge of money laundering conspiracy. West and another defendant, Jimmy Ylimaki, were at large.
According to the prosecutors’ statement, law enforcement officers found 20 of the defendants “in the act of placing phone calls to elderly victims in Virginia” while carrying out searches at several call centers in Canada in June 2024. The officers also discovered one defendant in his truck “with numerous cell phones and lists of elderly individuals in multiple states,” the statement said.
Scams targeting senior citizens have long been an issue in the United States and around the world, and technology has made impostor scams increasingly easier. In some cases, perpetrators are now using artificial intelligence to impersonate the voices of victims’ family members and convince them to give their money.
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