Man gets 5 years in prison for lottery scam targeting elderly Pennsylvanians

The ringleader of a Jamaican lottery scheme that bilked senior citizens out of millions of dollars will spend more than five years in prison for the scam that spanned not just Pennsylvania but also reached nationwide, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Friday.

Kristoff Cain, who went by Patrick Williams, pleaded guilty in late December to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court. U.S. District Judge Cathy BIssoon sentenced Cain last week to 70 months.

Shapiro said Cain will likely be deported once his sentence ends.

“This sentence is justice for the victims of Kirstoff Cain scams targeting elderly Pennsylvanians,” he said in a statement.

He called the scheme disgusting, noting that not only did Cain bilks victims in Pennsylvania out of money, but he had co-conspirators who operated out of Allegheny County: Audrey Huff and Donovan Wallace.

The scam spanned nearly five years, from September 2013 until April 2018. The lottery scam took several forms, including one version in which victims are told they won the lottery but have to first pay taxes to collect their winnings, Shapiro said. In another, perpetrators impersonated FBI agents to convince victims to send money.

In one instance in February 2017, a Massachusetts woman sent Cain and his co-conspirators $4,000 as a “tax payment” for $3.5 million in fake lottery winnings. In another instance, a South Carolina man was contacted by someone posing as an FBI agent. He sent the scammers $25,000 to cover “discrepancies in his bank account.”