The United States Department of Justice says a 37-year-old Jamaican woman who tricked Americans into applying for bogus debt relief has been sentenced to three years in prison.
The woman Sereika Savariau, is a resident of Montego Bay, St. James.
Savariau pleaded guilty on April 16 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution.
She has also been ordered to pay restitution to the victims.
Nora Gaye Banton reports.
The US Department of Justice issued a statement on Friday morning, saying Savariau created a series of fraudulent debt relief companies.
It say the companies targeted debt-ridden Americans.
The companies tricked victims into paying fraudulent processing fees and disclosing sensitive personal identifying information from at least June 2016 through September 2018.
One of the fraudulent websites said consumers could receive up to 60-thousand US dollars in government-funded aid to pay their bills.
Another claimed consumers could receive up to 25-thousand US dollars in annual debt relief.
Savariau admitted that through their false representations, she and her co-conspirators tried to defraud US victims out of more than 5-hundred-and-50-thousand US dollars.
More than 50 individuals sent money to conspirators because of the scheme, most commonly through Western Union, believing the funds were service processing fees.
The US Justice Department says thinking they were to receive government-funded debt relief, victims eagerly sent their sensitive personal and financial information and paid exorbitant “processing fees”.
These processing fees were approximately 14 per cent of the requested debt relief.
The Justice Department says the nature of the scheme caused many victims to be victimized multiple times.
The conspirators also fraudulently used the victims’ personal identifying information for other illegal purposes.
In one example, a victim’s information was used to create a PayPal account for use in the scheme.
The information also was used to apply for and obtain an American Express pre-paid credit card.
Savariau’s conduct directly violated a prior judicial order issued in September 2015 that, among other things, permanently restrained her and those working with her from misrepresenting to others that they would substantially reduce consumers’ debts.
Savariau was indicted by a federal grand jury in December 2021, arrested in Jamaica in July 2023 and extradited to the United States in September 2023.
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