By Michael Donoghue
Vermont News First

A Montreal-area man, who is among about two dozen defendants indicted as part of a more than $21 million international “grandparent” scam operating in Vermont, has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Burlington to a felony fraud charge.

Federal authorities in Vermont indicted 25 Canadians in the criminal case in February 2025 and all but two were arrested by March 2025, officials said.

Jimmy “Coop” Ylimaki, 36, fled to Nicaragua, where he was eventually captured and was recently removed to the United States to face his indictment, officials said.

Court documents show Ylimaki initially fled to Costa Rica, but his records show he studied about extraditions in Nicaragua — which historically has refused U.S. removal requests – and then jumped to the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. It appears his motivation to move to Nicaragua was to try to evade prosecution in Vermont.

Ylimaki is the first person among the 25 defendants to make it to a federal courtroom in Vermont because the others are still facing extradition from Canada, court records show.

Ylimaki made his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Burlington on Tuesday before Magistrate Judge Kevin J. Doyle, who ordered him detained pending trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nate Burris in a detention motion said Ylimaki was a risk to flee and there was no guarantee he would return from Canada if released. The defense did not object.

As part of his detention motion, Burris attached a seized phone call sheet as an exhibit that identified 34 Vermont targets with their names, addresses, ages, phone numbers and projected annual incomes ranges. It was confiscated during series of raids at several call centers in Quebec in June 2024.

The top elderly target on the one-page exhibit was a 78-year-old resident of Killington with an income between $300,000 and $399,999, the call sheet indicated.

Four other targets, a 78-year-old in Burlington, a 78-year-old in Woodstock, a 77-year-old in Norwich and an 85-year-old in Lowell were all in the $200,000 to $299,999 annual income range, the exhibit reflected.

Police seized hundreds of “victim call lists” with potential targets, Burris noted.

On the call sheet Burris shared with the judge, there were 10 targets in Windsor County, seven in Orange County and five in Chittenden County. At least nine counties had targets, including five in the Northeast Kingdom.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophardt said this week the office takes these elderly fraud cases seriously and defendants can’t hide.

Ophardt said the office “remains committed to pursuing criminal organizations that target vulnerable elderly Vermonters, regardless of the country from which they operate and regardless of where they flee in attempts to avoid prosecution.”

The conspirators stole from victims across at least 45 states, including all six New England states and New York, between the summer of 2021 and June 4, 2024, the indictment said.

“In total, the Grandparent Scam defrauded hundreds of elderly victims across the United States out of millions of dollars per year,” the indictment said.

During the phone calls members of the conspiracy used impersonation and falsehoods to convince elderly victims that their loved ones, typically a grandchild, had been arrested after a car crash and needed money for bail.

Court papers spell out the telemarketing fraud scheme:

The initial callers typically pose as a member of the elderly victim’s family (usually a grandchild) and claim – falsely – to be in legal trouble, such as a motor vehicle accident.

A second person posing as an “attorney” representing the family member then states that the elderly victim of the scam needs to provide a large sum of cash – typically thousands or tens of thousands of dollars – to bail the family member out of jail. The “attorneys” involved in this scam often identify themselves by various fictitious names, which sometimes are re-used in connection with calls to multiple elderly victims.

Callers utilize a script, which has been crafted over time to refine the deception that is at the heart of the scam. The elderly victim is then instructed to provide the “bail money” to a “bail bondsman” who comes to the elderly victim’s home to collect the money later the same day, the papers note.

Ylimaki played the role of an “attorney” in the grandparent scam and was considered a “closer” for deals, records show.

Ylimaki was initially encountered inside a call center in Quebec when Canadian law enforcement executed a search warrant on June 4, 2024. Ylimaki reportedly was actively placing calls in the moments before the search warrant, and multiple “call lists” containing names, addresses, phone numbers, ages, and annual incomes of elderly Americans were found on his desk, records show.

Ylimaki faces up to 20 years of in prison, if convicted.

Burris in the detention motion said due to Ylimaki’s active participation in the case that when the federal sentencing guidelines are calculated it could come out higher than 20 years.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is the leading prosecutor for elderly fraud in Vermont. It had charged 9 other people in federal court in Vermont in recent years as part of the Grandparent Scam.

Ophardt offered paise on Wednesday for the investigatory efforts of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He also recognized the contributions of the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service in assisting with locating Ylimaki in Nicaragua.

Burris is working with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michelle Arra, and Nicole Cate on the case.

Ophardt said the prosecution is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by an Executive Order for Protecting the American People Against Invasion.

The HSTF is a partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders, Ophardt said.