March 15, 2016
Posted March 28, 2016
Geoffrey Alexander Ramer was sentenced to 108 months in prison and to pay $2.9 million in restitution and forfeit $1.9 million for his role in a sweepstakes fraud scheme that victimized hundreds of elderly U.S. residents. According to his guilty plea, Ramer owned and operated call centers located in Costa Rica which called U.S. residents, many of whom were elderly, and falsely informed them they had won a substantial cash prize in a sweepstakes but needed to pay purportedly refundable insurance fees to obtain the money. Ramer and his co-conspirators kept the victims’ funds, never provided any winnings to the victims and used the funds to continue the call centers’ operations. DOJ