Miami-Dade man shot by agents catches ‘break’ with 10-month sentence for scamming elderly
A Miami-Dade man who admitted to picking up tens of thousands of dollars sent by elderly people who were tricked into helping relatives supposedly in trouble with the law got an early Christmas gift Wednesday when a judge sentenced him to the time he has already served in a federal lock-up — 10 months.
Johnny Watson, 45, who was shot by federal agents in an altercation before his arrest in February, caught the sentencing break after a federal prosecutor and his defense attorney essentially asked for the same punishment because of his “minor role” in the scheme to pry cash from elderly victims.
Watson, who was not found to have contacted any of the victims, apologized for his wrongdoing. “I’m sorry for my role in this, and I’m sorry for the victims it happened to,” he told U.S. District Judge Roy Altman.
Watson was wounded and his cohort, Brandon Wimberly, was fatally shot as agents tried to stop them as they drove in a minivan after picking up an envelope of cash sent to a vacant Coral Gables home in mid-February during one of their scams. Agents with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) opened fire after Wimberly “brandished” a firearm, according to the agency.
In October, Watson pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit mail fraud in which he, Wimberly and others conned elderly people into sending them packages of money after they were led to believe they were helping relatives who supposedly got arrested and needed help to pay for a lawyer.
Watson, who had a criminal history of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute and other narcotics offenses, was implicated in four cash pickups in Miami-Dade totaling $49,000 — money that he was ordered to repay the elderly victims by the judge.
In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Lunkenheimer read a statement from a Texas couple who lost $5,000 after they were told their grandson serving in the U.S. Navy was charged in the death of an officer pushed overboard on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. It was a hoax.
In their statement, the couple wrote that “it was hard to believe that someone would be so cruel” and “deliberately terrorize” them, leaving them “feeling so vulnerable.”
Lunkenheimer recommended that Watson receive a sentence of one year and a day, which, with good behavior, amounted to 10 months.
Watson’s defense attorney, Ian McDonald, urged Altman to give his client a sentence of time served, noting that he suffered a gunshot wound and was in custody for the past 10 months during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Mr. Watson played a minor role here; he was not a mastermind of the scheme,” McDonald said.
Altman, the judge, said he recognized those factors while concluding that 10 months was a “fair” sentence for a “serious crime” committed against a vulnerable group of people, the elderly. The high end of the sentencing guidelines for Watson’s offense was 14 months.
Altman noted that federal prosecutors gave Watson a “break” by recognizing his minor role in the scheme and urged him to “turn your life around.”
Scam phone calls targeting the elderly have been a persistent problem in Florida and the United States in recent years.
According to a criminal complaint, the probe into Watson began when a package containing $12,000 — sent by a 69-year-old Maryland woman — was intercepted at a mail sorting facility. A court-approved tracking device was placed in the package, which was then delivered to a vacant house on the 5300 block of Red Road on Feb. 12, 2021.
But parked outside, according to agents, was a gray Chrysler minivan. A man identified only as a “co-conspirator” — believed to be Wimberly — exited the van, picked up the package and got back in the van. Watson, the complaint said, was also inside. Agents in unmarked vehicles followed the van, but it soon began driving “erratically, making multiple U-turns and abrupt turns” — signaling that the surveillance had been spotted.
According to the complaint, agents tried pulling the van over and there was “an encounter between law enforcement and the vehicle” and a “firearm was later located inside the vehicle.” Watson was in the passenger seat, the package of money on a rear seat, the complaint said.
Agents said the money had been sent by an elderly Maryland couple that received phone calls from two people, one impersonating an attorney, another impersonating their child.
“One of the two callers, or both, asked them to send the money to Miami and New Jersey,” the complaint said.
Parcel-delivery drivers also reported the van was involved in picking up or attempting to pick up packages sent to other locations. In one of those cases, a woman had sent $8,000 to Miami after a man claimed her grandson had been injured in a car crash and needed the money for legal services.
The complaint said phone records tied Watson and Wimberly to the scams.
This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM.
