FBI Agent Brings Lottery Kingpin to Justice
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Looking for a change of pace, FBI agent Gasper decides to move from New York, where he's lived his entire life, to North Dakota. As he settles in to his new field office in the Midwest, Gasper discovers that there are an alarming number of lottery scams being perpetrated against residents in his area. The cases are complex, and with many of the scammers overseas, they are hard to bring to trial. But Gasper is set on getting justice for the victims of these swindles and dedicates himself to investigating the crimes. Meanwhile, Nancy, a 78-year-old retired financial planner, receives a letter stating that she's won the lottery. To claim her prize, she just needs to pay the taxes on her winnings. She isn't sure if the claim is legitimate and is hesitant to proceed. But after receiving multiple assurances from the scammers over months, Nancy gives in and sends them $20,000 and becomes one of the many victims Gasper will interview as part of his investigation. After years of painstaking work, the FBI agent finally gets the break he's been looking for. He links a U.S. resident to the lottery-scam ring that operates overseas. This is the connecting piece that Gasper needs and will lead to a large-scale U.S. trial, the arrest of 27 scammers, and justice for 95 victims.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up this week on AARP The Perfect Scam. |
| 0:03.6 | See they can lie like you cannot believe. |
| 0:07.7 | Welcome back to AARP The Perfect Scam. |
| 0:10.2 | I'm Will Johnson, your host, and we are joined by my co-host as always |
| 0:13.6 | A A A A-A-R-P's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. Frank welcome back. |
| 0:17.8 | Thanks, we'll be here. |
| 0:18.8 | Frank, we will get into this week's story in just a minute but first of all I just wanted to talk about |
| 0:23.0 | how interesting it's been for me as being part of the show and then talking to |
| 0:28.9 | people who are listeners or family members or friends and as they have talked to other people and said hey this might be a |
| 0:35.8 | scam or they're just wiser I think and more skeptical how great it is when you |
| 0:41.5 | can tell someone hey look out that might be a scam and then they |
| 0:44.5 | realize that is and then they didn't become a victim I'm sure that happens to you |
| 0:48.6 | quite a bit but that's a great feeling and I think passing along that |
| 0:51.7 | knowledge and information is so valuable. |
| 0:53.4 | This is why there's, it's great that there are organizations like AARP today that have reached out to |
| 0:58.5 | their more than 38 million members to help them through the Fraud Watch Network, |
| 1:02.5 | understand these scams and through the perfect scam |
| 1:05.0 | that we are doing right now on our podcast. |
| 1:07.7 | So it's great that we have people and groups |
| 1:10.3 | and organizations like AARP and the volunteers at ARP that go out every day and educate people |
| 1:16.2 | about all these scams in many different ways like we do with the perfect scam. |
| 1:21.0 | Well I know for a fact that we have listeners who have been able to tell someone else that, you know, |
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