The police reported that Adrian Lawrence, also known as ‘Mastermind’, was detained in Panama City in January and extradited to the US earlier this week at the request of US authorities.
He is facing a six-count indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, as well as mail and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud US citizens.
Lawrence was arraigned on Friday in federal court in New York.
According to the attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, Lawrence and his co-conspirators defrauded dozens of elderly victims of collectively more than US$5-million by willfully misleading them to believe they had won a sweepstakes and needed to pay fees to release their winnings.
The fraudulent scheme was allegedly committed from October 2013 to April 2020.
