On February 11, 2026, U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan from the District of Connecticut and USPS inspector Nicholas Bucciarelli from Boston announced the arrest of 31-year-old Jamaican national Richard Murray for his facilitation of a PCH scam, where
- Murray and his co-conspirators called their primarily-elderly victims to falsely claim they had won a prize from the Publisher’s Clearing House.
- The scammers will also send a fraudulent “winning notification” letter under the false personation of the Publisher’s Clearing House and a fake letter under the false personation of the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
- In order to claim their “winnings,” the victims were “required by law” to pay “fees and taxes” in the form of cash, money orders or checks.
- The funds are also usually received from a network of couriers or “money mules,” with some having been victims themselves.
- The money is then laundered to a series of accounts generated by recruited individuals and some money mules, then to Jamaica in the form of ATM cards for certain US bank accounts.
Murray was indicted by a federal grand jury in New Haven, Connecticut on April 16, 2024 and was eventually arrested in Hampton, Georgia on January 22, 2026. He now faces up to 100 years in prison on charges of
- Conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud
- Three counts of mail fraud
- Conspiracy to commit money laundering.