Millions of notices telling people they had been specially chosen
A federal jury convicted Phillip Priolo in March 2025 over a scheme that mailed millions of prize notices falsely telling recipients they had been specifically chosen for a large cash prize, which they would receive on payment of a fee. Thousands of victims, many of them elderly, over 21 months.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Convicted
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Mass-mailing and psychic letter fraud, Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- The Justice Department announced the conviction on 19 March 2025.
- Phillip Priolo, 61, of Hallandale Beach, Florida, was convicted after a federal jury trial.
- He and his co-conspirators mailed millions of prize notices falsely representing that victims had been specifically chosen to receive a large cash prize, and would receive it if they paid a fee.
- The mailings ran from March 2015 to December 2016.
- Victims numbered in the thousands, many of them elderly.
- He was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and four counts of mail fraud, each carrying a maximum of 20 years.
- The case was brought by the Justice Department's Consumer Protection Branch with the US Postal Inspection Service and the Office for Victims of Crime.
Why this case matters
It is the plainest statement of the mechanism anywhere in the record:
mailed millions of prize notices that falsely represented that the victims had been specifically chosen to receive a large cash prize and would receive the prize if they paid a fee
Two lies in one sentence, and they do different jobs. Specifically chosen supplies the flattery. If you paid a fee supplies the transaction. Neither works without the other.
Millions of notices, thousands of victims
Read those two numbers together. Millions of notices went out over 21 months; the victims number in the thousands.
That ratio is the economics of the whole category. A response rate well under one per cent is perfectly viable, because printing and posting is cheap and each responder pays repeatedly. Nobody running this needs the letter to be convincing to most people. They need it to be convincing to a fraction of one per cent, reliably, at volume.
It is the same arithmetic as mass sextortion email, run on paper and at a much higher cost per attempt — which tells you how well it works.
The 21-month window
March 2015 to December 2016.
Compared with the twenty years of the psychic mailing scheme, this is a short run — and both were prosecuted years after they stopped. Postal fraud is slow to detect and slow to charge, because there is no platform generating reports in real time and no payment network flagging patterns. The evidence arrives through the Postal Inspection Service and through victims who eventually tell somebody.
Who brings these cases
The Consumer Protection Branch of the Justice Department, with the US Postal Inspection Service and the Office for Victims of Crime.
The Postal Inspection Service is the reason this category is prosecuted at all. Mail fraud is a federal offence with a dedicated investigative agency attached to it — which is not true of most of the schemes on this site, and is why the paper version of prize fraud has a far better enforcement record than the telephone version.
Sources
- Federal Jury Convicts Florida Resident for Operating Mass Mailing Fraud Scheme Targeting Elderly and Vulnerable Victims. US Department of Justice. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 19 March 2025 conviction, the defendant, the millions of prize notices and their false representation, the March 2015 to December 2016 period, the thousands of elderly victims, the counts and maximum sentence, and the agencies involved.
- Nevada Printer and Mailer Pleads Guilty to Participating in Elder Fraud Scheme. US Department of Justice. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The parallel prosecution of the printing and mailing side of the same enforcement line.