BISMARCK, North Dakota—Frank Gasper had a problem, an Edna Schmeets problem. For more than a decade, the FBI special agent had busted mobsters and white-collar crooks in New York City, including a real-life character who inspired the movie "Goodfellas." But after several strange twists, he'd ended up in North Dakota, where he was struggling to convince an 82-year-old widow that he really was a federal lawman, not one of the Jamaicans who'd spent months scamming her out of nearly $300,000.Schmeets was a housewife who tended cows on the family farm while her late husband worked on the railroad. She lived in a tiny town called Harvey about 80 miles south of the Canadian border. One September day in 2011, Schmeets got a phone call from a man who introduced himself as Newton Bennett, from the company American Cash Awards. He delivered good news: Schmeets had won a $19 million lottery jackpot and a new Mercedes.Schmeets wasn't buying it—until somebody who claimed to be with the FBI called to assure her the prize was real. The imposter's call drew Gasper into what initially seemed like the unsexiest of cases. But it quickly became his obsession, taking him into the heart of a massive scam that's now as lucrative as the drug trade in Jamaica, and just as deadly.
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