On September 19, 2024, Montego Bay, Jamaica resident Sereika Savariau, 37, was found guilty of running a string of fraudulent debt relief businesses that deceived Americans in debt by tricking them into paying fictitious processing fees and disclosing private information. Savariau was also ordered to restitution to the victims.
Sereika Savariau-Goodison, another name for Savariau, entered a guilty plea on April 16 to a charge of conspiring to conduct wire fraud that would impact a financial institution.
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Savariau admitted as part of her guilty plea that, between at least June 2016 and September 2018, she and other conspirators established and ran several fraudulent debt relief businesses that deceived US citizens into disclosing identity documents and paying fictitious processing fees. According to one of the phony websites, customers might get up to US$60,000 in government-funded assistance to settle their debts. Another stated that customers might get debt relief of up to US$25,000 per year.
Savariau acknowledged that she and her accomplices attempted to swindle US victims out of almost $550,000 by making false statements. Because of the plan, more than fifty people wired money to conspirators, mostly via Western Union, thinking the money was for service processing costs.
People who were in a desperate attempt to improve their financial circumstances and get their unpaid debts paid were used by Savariau and her accomplices. Victims gladly supplied sensitive financial and personal information, thinking they would obtain government-funded debt relief. They also paid outrageous “processing fees,” which amounted to almost 14% of the sought debt relief. Due to the nature of the plan, many victims suffered several times.
The conspirators also fraudulently obtained other illicit uses for the victims’ personally identifiable information. For instance, one victim’s information was utilized to open a PayPal account for the scheme, another victim’s name and address were used to register one of their fraudulent debt relief sites, and still, another victim’s information was used to apply for and be granted an American Express prepaid credit card.
Savariau’s actions explicitly contravened a previous court ruling from September 2015, which among other things barred her and her associates from deceiving others into believing they would significantly lower their clients’ debts.
A federal grand jury indicted Savariau in December 2021; he was detained in Jamaica in July 2023 and extradited to the US in September 2023.
