Troy Murray

The role

Murray was not the voice on the phone. He was the *infrastructure*: he compiled, scrubbed, and resold so-called sucker lists — names, addresses, and ages of older Americans who had previously responded to a sweepstakes pitch — to scam call-centers in Jamaica, Costa Rica, and West Africa.

Each list was scored by how recently the target had paid an upfront "fee" to claim a fake prize. The freshest names sold for the most.

The harm

A name on Murray's list could be called dozens of times a week by different operations using the same data. Victims drained retirement accounts paying fictitious "taxes" and "release fees" on prizes that never existed. The DOJ tied tens of millions of dollars in elder-fraud losses to downstream use of his lists.

Conviction

• Convicted at trial of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud
• Sentenced May 28, 2026 to 121 months (10 years 1 month) in federal prison
• Ordered to pay restitution to identified victims

The lesson

If a parent or grandparent has paid even once to "claim" a prize, their information is now on a list that will be resold for years. The single most effective defense is registering them on the National Do Not Call Registry, blocking unknown numbers by default, and filing complaints with the FTC every time a scam call gets through — which is what eventually shut Murray down.