A Vancouver man has been convicted on 16 counts of fraud in a U.S. court for operating a $600,000 lottery scam targeting the elderly.
Henry Anekwu, 43, operated two phony lottery companies in Vancouver from 1998 to 2003, and employed telemarketers to contact potential victims in the States, according to an FBI press release.
Victims of the scheme were told that they had won the lottery, but would have to pay taxes or processing fees to receive their cash.
Cheques for as much as $60,000 were paid out to Anekwu's companies, and the FBI says that the elderly victims were sometimes talked in mortgaging their homes or selling other assets to make the payments.
Anekwu was arrested by the RCMP's commercial crime unit in 2005, and extradited to California in December.
He is scheduled to be sentenced at a hearing in Los Angeles on July 12, and faces a maximum of 160 years in prison.
