Man sent to prison for selling data of 7 millions elderly Americans

A North Carolina man was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for selling the personal information of over 7 million elderly Americans to Jamaican scammers.

57-year-old Troy Murray (who used the Steve Dixon pseudonym) pleaded guilty in January 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced Thursday to 121 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $5,2 million.

Prosecutors said that Murray's alias was so widely known among Jamaican scammers that it was referenced in a 2022 song lyric by a Jamaican musical artist.

According to court documents, 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, who used the information to commit lottery fraud.

Murray earned hundreds of thousands of dollars annually after typically charging $500 per list of 100 to 300 names. After the wire transmission services he used blocked him from their platforms, he asked his "clients" to pay him in prepaid gift cards instead.

He allegedly sent at least 22,000 lead lists over the years-long scheme, generating more than $5.2 million for himself and causing victim losses exceeding $9.5 million.

Murray used the illegal proceeds to purchase farm equipment, vehicles, and precious metal collectibles, and also sent some of these funds to his son, Cutter Murray, for personal and business expenses.

In June 2025, the Justice Department also revealed that Murray's son will plead guilty to one count of money laundering for receiving and laundering $1.6 million of the fraudulent funds he obtained.

Murray's sentencing comes as elder fraud continues to surge nationwide. According to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, elderly Americans aged 60 and older filed over 200,000 fraud complaints last year, representing a 37% increase over 2024.

Affected elderly victims have also reported total losses of nearly $7.8 billion, a 59% year-over-year rise, with the average loss per complainant reaching $38,500.

This week, the U.S. Justice Department also filed insider trading charges against a Google security engineer, accusing him of using confidential company data to place bets on the cryptocurrency-based decentralized prediction market Polymarket.