Local Loses $50k to Phone Scam

The lure of Jamaican lottery money was enough to make a Wiltonian pay. A lot.

A 51-year-old Heather Lane resident started receiving cold calls this year in January, notified that he had won millions of dollars in a Jamaican lottery. All he had to do was transfer some funds to the country to free up his winnings. And, sadly, he did just that.

"It's extremely unfortunate," Wilton Police Lieutenant Don Wakeman said of the incident. "There was continued back and forth correspondence between himself and unknown parties all the way through August in which they continued to request that he forward money for various fees."

Spending a few bucks to win big is all but a national past time in the U.S. But this Wilton resident went a little further than that. Over an eight-month period police said he forwarded almost $50,000 to unidentified third party solicitors.

Police said he doesn't stand to recover any of that money. They've traced the contact information to an area code in Jamaica but, aside from already having forwarded the issue to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, there's not much more Wilton authorities can do.

"You really need to be highly suspicious when you have an unknown caller propositioning you like that," Wakeman said. "[The resident] got wrapped up in the thought that he was truly a winner and was going to follow up and do everything it took to collect his winnings."

Another Wilton man , and Wakeman said similar scams have become prevalent "all over the country."