Temporary Restraining Order Issued in Elder Fraud Investigation

TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER ISSUED IN ELDER FRAUD INVESTIGATION

Civil complaint alleges Rhode Island based direct-mail sweepstakes solicitation schemes bilked thousands of elderly and vulnerable individuals of more than ten million dollars

PROVIDENCE –At the request of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island, U.S. District Court Chief Judge William E. Smith today issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting a Providence businessman, his wife, and a third associate, and their companies, from using the U.S. Postal Service or other services to distribute advertisements, solicitations or promotional materials that represent that recipients have or will win, or are eligible to win cash, receive prizes, or items of value in return for a “processing fee,” after the government filed a civil complaint in federal court seeking to enjoin this activity as an alleged ongoing mail fraud scheme.

The filing of the civil complaint and issuance of the temporary restraining order is announced by United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island Stephen G. Dambruch.

It is alleged in court documents that since 2011, and continuing to the present, Michael Shine and his wife Meagan Shine, of Warwick, R.I., and Melissa Pinelli, of Cranston, R.I., have utilized the U.S. Mail to engage in predatory mail fraud schemes that primarily affect the elderly and vulnerable through fictitious businesses they owned and operated: Lucky Dog, LLC, d/b/a Premium Ops & Incentives, and Destiny Merchandise, LLC, d/b/a Independent Catalog Services, owned by the Shines, and Premier Caging Services, owned by Melissa Pinelli. The three businesses operated out of the same address in Providence, R.I.  These schemes have duped victims into sending more than ten million dollars in supposed fees for the processing of cash prizes, valuable items, or other premiums that they are promised, but will never receive.

As part of the scheme, individuals, often elderly and vulnerable individuals, are contacted via U.S. Mail with deceptive solicitations that convey the false impression that recipients have been pre-selected or that they have been verified and are entitled to claim a large amount of money in a lottery, or are entitled to a valuable item. In the mailings, recipients are or were instructed to send money, frequently by a deadline, to a PO Box in Providence for the “processing” or “handling” of their purported winnings.

The mailings are printed on official-looking or certificate paper, and frequently contain other language and details designed to make them appear official or legitimate, including bar codes, document control numbers, printing that appears to be rubber stamped, such as the phrase “authorized document,” highlighted text, bank-check style typeface and formatting, and identification and other codes. The solicitations use selectively-emphasized text and graphics to create the false overall impression that recipients are receiving notices that they are already winners of substantial awards. In reality, not only have recipients not won any prize, the mailers have done nothing to verify that the recipients are eligible for such a prize.

An investigation by United States Postal Inspection Service agents and the United States Attorney’s Office revealed that sweepstakes solicitations were sent to recipients in forty-one states. Many victims interviewed stated that they were contacted numerous times and were led to believe that they had won substantial sums of money and/or valuable prizes. Each time, victims were instructed to submit processing fees of between $20 and $30 dollars in order to claim their winnings.  Some elderly victims sent well over a thousand dollars to the defendants in response to multiple solicitations.

The investigation conservatively estimated the number of responses and payments received in response to the solicitations at nearly 50,000 per year.

The matter is being litigated by Assistant United States Attorneys Denise M. Barton, Ly T. Chin, and Zachary A. Cunha.