NORTH CAROLINA — Troy Murray, a 57-year-old man from North Carolina, was sentenced in 2026 to 121 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $5.2 million after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Between 2016 and 2023, Murray sold lead lists containing the names, phone numbers, physical addresses, and email addresses of elderly Americans to scammers in Jamaica and elsewhere. Court documents state he sent at least 22,000 such lists, typically charging $500 per list of 100 to 300 names, which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and more than $5.2 million total.
The scammers used the stolen information to carry out lottery fraud, resulting in victim losses exceeding $9.5 million. After wire transmission services blocked Murray from their platforms, he instructed clients to pay him using prepaid gift cards. He used the proceeds to purchase farm equipment, vehicles, precious metal collectibles, and to send funds to his son, Cutter Murray, for personal and business expenses.
In June 2025, Cutter Murray agreed to plead guilty to one count of money laundering for receiving and laundering $1.6 million of the fraudulent proceeds. Troy Murray had operated under the pseudonym Steve Dixon, a name referenced in a 2022 song lyric by a Jamaican musical artist, according to court documents.
According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, Americans aged 60 and older filed more than 200,000 fraud complaints in 2024, reporting nearly $7.8 billion in losses. The average loss per elder fraud complainant that year was $38,500.