NEW HAVEN, CT (1010 WINS) — A Connecticut man was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for his role in multiple lottery and romance schemes to defraud hundreds of mostly elderly people out of millions of dollars, officials said.
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The New Haven fraudster, 31-year-old Rodney Thomas, is one of three men involved in the elaborate schemes to falsely claim people were lottery winners or romance them to swindle them out of money, court documents show.
Thomas and his co-conspirators, Farouq Fasasi and Ralph Pierre, ran the scams for about five years from 2015 to 2020. Thomas, Fassai and other people a part of the scam lived together in a New Haven home where they collected the money and gifts sent to them through their false claims.
One of the ways the men defrauded people was by notifying them that they one the lottery but they had to pay taxes, shipping and processing in order to get their prize. The victims would send money but their winnings never came.
The other scam the men pulled were romance schemes–creating fake online profiles and life stories, sometimes filled with heartbreaking false life stories to create trust, in order to take advantage of the unsuspecting victims by asking for money and gifts.
Fasasi and Thomas recruited others into the scheme, including those who worked as “money mules.” The "money mules" used personal bank accounts, and also established and used bank accounts in the names of businesses and charitable organizations, to launder money they got from the fraud victims.
In total, the men stole more than $5 million from the victims, many of them elderly and vulnerable, with some losing their life savings. One Connecticut victim lost more than $1 million.
Thomas and Fassai were found guilty of multiple charges on Feb. 15. Thomas has been detained since May 31 after his bond was revoked for violating conditions of his release. Along with the six year prison sentence, Thomas was given three years of supervised release.
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