Man sentenced to 5 years for stealing more than $142K in ‘grandparent scam’ Updated 4:25 PM; A Bronx, N.Y. man was sentenced to five years in state prison Monday in a so-called “grandparent scam” to steal $142,900 from eight older New Jersey residents, authorities said. Osvaldo Thomas, 41, pleaded guilty to a second-degree theft by deception charge on Feb. 19. He was sentenced Monday by Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Buck in Middlesex County. “In pleading guilty, Thomas admitted that he participated in a scam – commonly known as a `grandparent scam’ – in which a caller claimed that the victim’s grandchild was in jail and that he was an attorney representing the grandchild,” the attorney general’s office said in a press release. “The caller told the victims that in order to get their grandchild out of jail, they needed to provide him with large sums of money for bail.”