A federal judge in White Plains sentenced Jordan Trought, a 31-year-old Jamaican national, to eight years in prison this week for leading part of an international sweepstakes fraud ring that took more than $9 million from more than 200 elderly victims across the United States. The Southern District of New York’s announcement, dated September 10, 2026, also ordered Trought to forfeit $6,166,227 and to serve three years of supervised release once the prison term ends. The case is a useful lesson in how this kind of money actually leaves a household: victims were told to mail cash and checks, wire funds, and send Zelle and Venmo transfers to strangers, payment methods that are difficult or impossible to claw back once sent.
A Scheme Prosecutors Trace Back To 2015
According to the Justice Department’s account of the case, the fraud ring operated from at least 2015 through at least 2025, run by Trought alongside co-conspirators based in both Jamaica and the United States. Trought joined the operation around March 2021 and rose to become one of its leaders; prosecutors held him personally responsible for more than $6 million taken from more than 100 victims between that point and his arrest in Jamaica on August 28, 2025. He was extradited to the United States on October 22, 2025, and in June 2026 he pled guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud, and bank fraud. U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti handed down the eight-year sentence, the three years of supervised release, and the forfeiture order. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the sentence “reflects the seriousness of schemes that deliberately target elderly victims and strip them of their financial security.”
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A Familiar Name, A Fake Prize, And A String Of “Fees”
The Justice Department’s release describes a pitch that will sound familiar to anyone who has fielded one of these calls: victims typically received an unsolicited phone call or text from someone using a common name, such as “David Miller,” claiming they had won a life-changing sum of money and a luxury car from a well-known marketing and sweepstakes company. To collect the supposed winnings, victims were told, they first had to pay taxes or fees to addresses and accounts the caller specified. The caller then stayed in touch, and once a victim made that first payment, told them additional payments were needed before the prize could be released. In some cases, the ring gained control of victims’ own bank accounts and moved money out of and through them directly. Court filings say the funds ultimately reached associates of Trought and his co-conspirators, as well as an automobile business Trought operated in Jamaica.
Cash, Wires, Zelle And Venmo: Why The Money Was Gone On Arrival
The mechanics of how victims paid explain why so little of the $9 million is likely to come back. Prosecutors say victims were instructed to send money by mailing checks, money orders and cash, and separately by wire transfer, Zelle and Venmo. Cash mailed in an envelope leaves no bank record tying it to a recipient and cannot be reversed once it is opened. A wire transfer that crosses into another account, especially one that quickly moves the funds again, is functionally final within hours. Zelle and Venmo were built to move money instantly between people who already trust each other, such as splitting a dinner bill, not to protect a sender from a stranger on the phone; neither service carries the dispute and reversal rights that come standard with a credit card purchase. That combination of irreversible rails is precisely why sweepstakes and prize schemes lean on them, and why law enforcement’s response, months or years later, catches up with a defendant long after the specific dollars are untraceable.
What A $6,166,227 Forfeiture Order Actually Covers
It is worth being precise about the number in the headline. Forfeiture is money or property a court orders a convicted defendant to give up because it is connected to the crime; it is a penalty against the defendant, not automatically a payment back to victims. The Justice Department’s release orders Trought to forfeit $6,166,227.00 but does not announce a restitution order or any dollar figure earmarked for the more than 200 people who lost money. That absence matters: the published record here does not say victims are being made whole, or that any specific portion of the forfeited funds will reach them. Money that has already moved through cash mailings, wires and peer-to-peer transfers into associates’ hands and a foreign business is often difficult to locate and seize in the first place, which is part of why forfeiture totals in fraud cases frequently land well short of the total amount stolen.
Prize And Sweepstakes Scams Remain A Growth Line In Federal Fraud Data
Cases like Trought’s sit inside a bigger, well-documented pattern. The Federal Trade Commission’s own December 1, 2025 report to Congress on protecting older consumers found that adults age 60 and over reported losing about $2.4 billion to fraud in 2024, up roughly fourfold from about $600 million in 2020. The same report found that older adults were far more likely than younger adults to report losing money specifically to tech support scams, prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams, romance scams, and government impersonation schemes. The FTC’s report draws on its Consumer Sentinel Network, which relies on people actually filing a report after they realize they have been defrauded, so the commission’s own figures are widely understood inside the agency as a floor rather than a full accounting of what older Americans lose to schemes built around a call that starts with congratulations and ends with a request for money.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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