Canadian ‘grandparent scammer’ gets jail time in California

It’s known as the “grandparent scam” and it nets con artists tens of millions of dollars a year.

Here’s the con: claim to be an old person’s grandchild, win their trust, appeal to their sense of family, and then tell them you’re in big trouble in some far away place and you need money bad.

It works a lot.

And, sometimes, the old Karma Wheel keeps on turnin’ and just desserts are served.

Take 29-year-old Montrealer Clifford Kirstein, who met his match in a California court on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Carmac J. Carney sentenced Kirstein to 41 months in prison for tricking elderly California residents with a scam that operated about eight years ago out of his Montreal apartment.

Noting that in one instance Kirstein issued threats of violence toward an elderly couple, Carney also ruled that Kirstein, along with four co-defendants, must pay US$56,258 in restitution to be shared between seven victims.

Last August, Carney sentenced one of Kirstein’s co-conspirators, 29-year-old Kelen Buchan, to 51 months in prison and ordered him to pay nearly US$520,000 in restitution to more than 80 victims.

Kirstein, Buchan and three other defendents were charged after the RCMP raided Kirstein’s Montreal apartment in 2012.

They found what they described as “a fully operating telemarketing boiler room” that included a money counting machine and several disposable “burner” phones.

The scammers were ordered extradicted to Los Angeles in January 2019.

In a sentencing memo, U.S. prosecutors wrote: “This scam was a heinous and cruel hoax, which involved threats of violence when victims did not co-operate. (Kirstein) and his co-schemers stole not only the victims’ money, but terrified them and damaged their self-confidence.”

With files from CTV (Basem Boshra) Orange Country Register