Jamaican Man Sentenced To 12 Years In Prison For Stealing 1.3 Million Worth Of Phones In The US

On Monday, a Jamaican man in the United States was ordered by a Judge to serve 12 years in prison after he was found guilty of being the leader of a scheme that involved the theft of Sprint Phones across 14 states in the country valued at 1.3 million dollars.

The Jamaica Observer who initially published the story identified the man as Horace Henry who is reported to be an illegal immigrant from the city of New York.

It is understood that Henry who is 44 years of age had previously made a guilty plea for a charge concerning conspiracy to commit mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. As a result, the Jamaican man was said to have been deported from the United States but illegally re-entered the country sometime after while being on supervisory release for three years.

For his current situation, it is believed that Henry might be facing deportation once more.

Between the period January 2018 and July 2019 when Homeland Security carried out investigations on the scheme, it was realized that 1630 Sprint phones valued the amount of $705,803 were ordered, however, most of the devices were not delivered causing the Phone company to lose a total amount of US $642,444.

The operation said to be led by Henry involved the identity theft of 390 persons, who had high credit scores who were led into opening Sprint accounts then taking orders for the devices.

Those persons involved in the scheme were said to have tracked the packages containing the phones and skillfully utilized stolen identities to pick up the items off porches or by interception. It is understood that $250 or $350 each was the payment given to those individuals that made the picking up.

As for Henry, as a way to not make himself appear as the leader of the scheme, he told the court that the phones were taken to New York City and sold to an Indian man, however, Homeland Security investigators on the matter said in a testimony that most of the phones had been exported with the possibility of their prices even tripling for sale.

As such the Judge presiding over the case concluded that the Jamaican man was a leader in the scheme since he was also the one that transported the persons picking up the packages as well as issuing them the fake Identification documents. 

Henry who was arrested in July of 2019 was also said to have been found with numerous social security numbers.

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