Jordan Trought, a 31-year-old citizen of Jamaica, was sentenced on September 10, 2026, to eight years in federal prison for leading a sweepstakes fraud ring that federal prosecutors say stole more than $9 million from over 200 elderly victims across the United States. U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti, sitting in the Southern District of New York, also ordered Trought to forfeit $6,166,227. The case traces back to at least 2015, when victims began receiving calls informing them they had won cash and a luxury car from a sweepstakes company, and it ended with federal agents tracing stolen funds to an automobile business Trought ran in Jamaica.
Eight Years, Three Years of Supervision and a $6,166,227 Forfeiture Order
The sentencing closed a prosecution that began with Trought’s arrest in Jamaica in August 2025. Briccetti sentenced Trought to eight years in prison plus three years of supervised release, well short of the 30-year statutory maximum attached to the underlying conspiracy count. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the punishment reflects the deliberate targeting of older victims, stating that Trought “defrauded hundreds of elderly victims out of millions of dollars, taking advantage of their age to rob them of their hard-earned life savings.” Trought, who was 30 when he entered his plea, turned 31 before sentencing, meaning just over three months separated his admission of guilt from the day he learned his punishment.
Briccetti also ordered forfeiture of $6,166,227.00, matching the restitution amount Trought had already agreed to when he entered his plea. Trought pleaded guilty in June 2026, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy, to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud.
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The Unsolicited “Prize Winner” Call That Ran for a Decade
Court filings describe a scheme built on repeated contact rather than a single approach. Victims typically got an unsolicited phone call or text from someone using a common alias, such as “David Miller,” claiming they had won a life-changing amount of money and a luxury car from a well-known marketing and sweepstakes company. The catch was always the same: taxes or fees had to be paid first, sent to addresses and accounts the caller specified, before any prize could arrive.
The scheme’s staying power came after that first payment. Callers stayed in contact with victims for months or years, informing them that additional payments were required to finally receive their winnings. In some cases, Trought and his co-conspirators gained control of victims’ own bank accounts, using that access to move money out of and through the accounts directly. The pattern let a single alias and a single false promise generate contact with a victim long after the first transaction, which is what allowed a ring that started in 2015 to still be collecting from victims a decade later.
More Than 200 Victims and an Automobile Business That Absorbed the Money
Prosecutors say Trought and his co-conspirators defrauded more than 200 elderly victims of more than $9 million from 2015 through 2025. Trought himself did not join the operation until around March 2021, when he became one of its leaders. For the period from March 2021 through his August 2025 arrest, he is being held personally responsible for more than $6 million stolen from more than 100 victims. That gap between the ring’s full decade of losses and Trought’s individual number is not a discrepancy: federal sentencing ties a defendant’s forfeiture and restitution to the victims and dollars tied to his own period running the scheme, not to years of losses that predated his arrival.
Stolen funds moved from victims to associates of Trought and his co-conspirators, and some of it reached an automobile business Trought operated in Jamaica. The ring itself spanned both countries, with co-conspirators based in Jamaica and in the United States working alongside Trought, who ran his share of the operation from Jamaica for roughly four and a half years before his arrest.
A Cross-Border Case Built on Extradition From Jamaica
Trought was arrested in Jamaica on August 28, 2025, and was extradited to the United States to face the charges. Securing that arrest required cooperation across multiple agencies: the U.S. Marshals Service, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, and Jamaican authorities including the Jamaican Constabulary Force, alongside the domestic investigation led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation. IRS-CI, the IRS’s law enforcement arm, is the only federal agency with jurisdiction over Internal Revenue Code violations and maintains an international presence through attaché posts abroad, which factored into tracking money that moved through Jamaica.
The case was handled out of the Southern District’s White Plains Division, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin Levander, Margaret Vasu and Ioannis Drivas prosecuting.
Why No Legitimate Sweepstakes Ever Asks a Winner to Pay First
The mechanics prosecutors laid out point to a single, durable warning sign: a real sweepstakes payout never requires the winner to send money before receiving the prize. Every payment Trought’s victims made was framed as a tax, a fee or some other prerequisite standing between them and a jackpot that never existed. Each successive request for more money, arriving after the first one was already paid, was the mechanism that let one aging con reach past $9 million and 200 households rather than stopping at one. The scheme’s opening call, placed roughly a decade before Trought’s sentencing, ran on the same script as its final one: an alias, a life-changing prize, and a fee due before any of it could be real.
That structure is what the sentencing record now documents in dollar terms: a forfeiture order of $6,166,227, a decade-long span of victimization dating to 2015, and a defendant who rose to lead the operation without ever meeting most of the people he defrauded. The Southern District’s own account of the case, filed under press release number 26-253, stands as the record of how it ended.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
