Two men pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their role in international sweepstakes that were allegedly scams.

Maurice Levy and Derrick Levy, 51 and 54, respectively, committed a series of sweepstake scams across the United States, preying on elderly and easily confused victims, federal prosecutors alleged.

The two men, both Jamaican nationals, used a call center in Costa Rica and masked their location through fake US calling codes, according to the Department of Justice. 

“Maurice Levy and Derrick Levy further admitted that they would call individuals in the United States, many of whom were elderly and vulnerable, and falsely claim that the individuals had won a sweepstakes prize but were required to pay fees prior to the delivery of the prize. In truth, no such prize existed,” the DOJ said in a statement.

“Once a victim made an initial payment for the purported fees, Maurice Levy, Derrick Levy, and their co-conspirators would continue to call the victim, falsely representing that a mistake had been made and that the victim had actually won a prize of a greater amount, or an issue had occurred, and the victim needed to pay additional fees to claim the prize,” the DOJ continued. “Many victims sent tens of thousands of dollars to Maurice Levy, Derrick Levy, and their co-conspirators in response to these calls.”

Levy and Levy were accused of taking in almost $10 million over the course of eight years.

“During the scheme, Derrick Levy and Maurice Levy fraudulently obtained more than $9,400,000 from victims, which was used to continue operating the call centers and for the co-conspirators’ personal benefit,” the DOJ concluded.

The DOJ has been handling numerous COVID-19 relief fund scams perpetrated over the course of the pandemic.

The department has prioritized cracking down on COVID-19 fraud since March when it appointed prosecutor Kevin Chamers as director for COVID-19 fraud enforcement. The group’s latest bust includes 21 individuals who ran schemes defrauding Americans out of $149 million and counting, the DOJ says.

The fraudster’s charges relate to “false billings to federal programs and theft from federally-funded pandemic assistance programs.”

The closing arguments in the murder trial of Nipsey Hussle began in Los Angeles on Thursday as prosecutors claimed his killer came strapped with two loaded weapons and a plan to shoot the rapper dead.

The rapper was murdered when nemesis Eric Holder allegedly unloaded at least 13 shots from a semi-automatic weapon and a handgun in front of the Marathon clothing store in South Los Angeles in 2019, according to prosecutors.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John McKinney said Holder deliberately killed Hussle and injured two other men — and insisted the slaying had nothing to do with a “snitching allegation.”

“He walked up to the group and said to Nipsey Hussle, ‘You’re through,’” McKinney said to jurors. “He didn’t say, ‘I’m not a snitch … Why are you talking about me?’

“I submit to you that the motive for killing Nipsey Hussle had little or nothing to do with the conversation they had. [Holder] already had a preexisting jealousy toward Nipsey Hussle.”

Holder’s murder trial began earlier this month, more than three years after he gunned down Hussle — whose real name is Ermias Joseph Asghedom — on March 31, 2019.

Los Angeles County Deputy Public Defender Aaron Jansen said Holder shot Hussle in the heat of passion because the “Racks in the Middle” rapper accused his client of being a snitch.

Holder, 32, is facing multiple charges, including murder, attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a felon.

McKinney said on Thursday that the attack on Hussle “was personal” and video footage showed Holder kicking Hussle while the rapper was on the ground bleeding and fighting for his life.

Hussle and his accused killer grew up in the same neighborhood and belonged to the same street gang — the Rollin 60s Crips. The similarities between the two men ended there as Hussle gained stardom for his music, while Holder struggled with his own rap career, McKinney told jurors.

“When people get successful, they make money, they leave their neighborhood … this man was different,” McKinney said to jurors as he put up a smiling picture of Hussle on a large television screen. “He wanted to change the neighborhood. He invested in the neighborhood — and the neighborhood loved him.”

Jansen admitted to jurors that his client shot Hussle but denied that it was premeditated. He said Hussle’s accusation that Holder was a snitch inflamed his client. 

Jansen said Holder should have been charged with voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. The lawyer insisted his client did not intend to shoot the other two men — Kerry Lathan and Shermi Cervinta Villanueva — because he did not know them.

McKinney, however, said on Thursday that Holder planned the killing.

“The evidence showed he went over there, willing to kill everyone in that space,” McKinney said. “Nipsey was clearly the target but (Holder) was willing to kill everyone or chase them away.”

Lathan, 56, suffered major injuries from a shot to the back and is now wheelchair-bound in a convalescent home. Villanueva, Lathan’s nephew, was only grazed by a bullet. Both men testified during the trial.

The trial was continued on Tuesday after Holder was reportedly attacked by inmates after he was transported back to jail after he left court on Monday.

McKinney will continue his closing argument on Thursday and will be followed by the defense.

A group of 66 journalists sent a rare protest letter to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday asking that President Biden’s staff abandon a mysterious pre-screening process for reporters and reopen large events to all journalists.

The letter from many current White House reporters — including prominent TV correspondents, famed veteran reporters and leaders of the White House Correspondents’ Association — follows a full year of the secretive selection process for venues such as the East Room that in past administrations were “open press.”

Biden aides have refused to tell the White House Correspondents’ Association the selection criteria and individual reporters have received an array of conflicting explanations, resulting in a widespread belief that the practice is meant to shape the variety of questions presented to the president.

“The current method of allowing a limited number of reporters into these events is not only restrictive and antithetical to the concept of a free press, but it has been done without any transparent process into how reporters are selected to cover these events,” the letter says.

“The continued inability of the White House to be candid and transparent about the selection process for reporters attending his remarks undermines President Biden’s credibility when he says he is a defender of the First Amendment,” it continues.

“The incongruity of these restrictions underscores the belief by many reporters that the administration seeks to limit access to the president by anyone outside of the pool, or anyone who might ask a question the administration doesn’t want asked.”

“Let us be candid,” the letter goes on. “Our job is not to be liked, nor is it to be concerned about whether or not you like what we ask. Reporters’ ability to question the most powerful man in our government shouldn’t be discretionary.”

“The administration’s continued efforts to limit access to the president cannot be defended. Any notion that space is ‘limited’ is not supported by the fact that every other president before Biden (including Trump) allowed full access to the very same spaces without making us fill out a request form prior to admittance.”

The letter concludes, “Thank you for your attention to these ahistorical problems. We ask you to see to it that the protocols are changed back to the access norms to which we are accustomed.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, CBS’s Ed O’Keefe and Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich and Kevin Corke signed the letter, as did legendary former ABC anchor and White House reporter Sam Donaldson, TheGrio’s April Ryan, Newsmax’s James Rosen, Gray Television’s Jon Decker and Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett.

The letter was drafted by veteran journalist Brian Karem, who writes for Salon. The second signature was from CBS Radio’s Steven Portnoy, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who privately lobbied against the practice for months. A reporter for The Post signed third and helped circulate the document.

Two other correspondents’ association board members — Todd GIllman of The Dally Morning News and Francesca Chambers of USA Today — signed, as did past presidents of the association Tom DeFrank and George Condon, both of National Journal, and all five candidates in this year’s association election.

In all, reporters assigned to more than half of the seats in the White House briefing room signed the letter.

The White House press office ended COVID-19 capacity restrictions for the briefing room in early June 2021, but has continued to claim “spacing constraints” to justify prescreening of reporters allowed into Biden’s own much larger indoor events, where he often takes questions.

Jean-Pierre said at a June briefing “I actually don’t know” how the selection process works, but denied it amounted to “blacklisting.” Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki in October declined to share the criteria, saying at a briefing, “I don’t have any more information on that.”

Over the past year, reporters were given a wide range of conflicting explanations of how the selection for events works, leading reporters to conclude that it was done in a way intended to shape the variety of questions posed to Biden, who often takes questions at such events, and to screen out others.

Jean-Pierre did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

​Former President Donald Trump ripped into Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time White House aide who dropped several bombshell revelations at a House hearing this week — deriding her as a “social climber,” claiming she was “living in a fantasy land” and discounting her allegation that he lunged at a Secret Service agent on Jan. 6, 2021.

The 45th president laughed off the suggestion by Hutchinson that he tried to overpower his protective detail and drive the presidential SUV to the Capitol, saying during a Thursday interview with News​m​ax that “these guys lift 350 pounds, I don’t.”

“The woman is living in a fantasy land,” he said of Hutchinson, a former top aide to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“She’s a social climber, if you call that social,” he continued. “I think it’s just a shame that this is happening to this country, and we don’t have any Republicans up there to dispute it.”

According to Hutchinson, who testified under oath before the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot Tuesday, Trump became so incensed when Secret Service agents refused to allow him to join his supporters that ​he tried to grab the steering wheel of the SUV he was being driven in and lunged toward Secret Service agent Robert “Bobby” Engel.​

“I’m the f–king president! Take me up to the Capitol now!” an irate Trump shouted, recalled Hutchinson, who said she ​had been told about the incident by Antony Ornato, then the White ​House’s deputy chief of staff for operations.

“Is there something wrong with her?” Trump mused aloud.

“She said I jumped from a car, I started strangling a Secret Service agent? I grabbed the steering wheel of a car? Said I wanted guns at my rally? I didn’t want guns. I have to speak, too​,” added the former president, who alleged the ​Secret Service called Hutchinson’s claims “totally false.”​​

Soon after Hutchinson’s testimony, Secret Service sources disputed the claims to a number of media outlets, with CNN reporting that Ornato had denied even relating the account to her.  

“They put her on, and they don’t even confirm it with the Secret Service,” Trump said. “The Secret Service people in the car said this didn’t happen, but you don’t even need that. Who would do that? I would grab a Secret Service person by the throat?​”

​​In her testimony, Hutchinson also said that Trump was aware that some in the crowd at his “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse were armed with AR-15-style assault rifles and firearms — but told Secret Service agents to remove the metal detectors to increase the size of the crowd in camera shots.

“I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t f–king care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f–king [magnetometers] away,’” Hutchinson said.

Trump insisted in the Newsmax interview that he “didn’t want other people to get hurt” but added the crowd was “one of the biggest groups I’ve ever spoken to before.”

The former president went on to claim the House committee was “illegally formed.”

“When you look at what they’re doing, and you look at what they’re saying, what they’re doing to the country, the good news is, a lot of people aren’t watching. A lot of people aren’t listening to it, but they’re trying to do real harm,” he said.

Hutchinson’s lawyers Jody Hunt and William Jordan said late Wednesday that their client
“stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”

Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a frequent Trump critic, also defended Hutchinson in a Wednesday night speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif.

“Her bravery and patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold,” Cheney said of the committee’s star witness.

An overwhelmed cop desperately called for assistance at the scene of the migrant death truck horror in Texas  — saying he had “too many bodies” to deal with, according to a report Thursday.

The disturbing request came as San Antonio cops were using police radios amid the search for the driver of the tractor-trailer, the San Antonio Express-News said.

“I have too many bodies here,” the unidentified officer reportedly said.

Cops initially estimated that 20 migrants had died in the sweltering trailer on Monday, according to recordings obtained by Express-News.

But authorities later counted 48 dead at the scene, with five more later dying later, pushing the toll to 53.

During the search for driver Homero Zamorano, who was reportedly “very high on meth” at the time, one cop broadcast his description, according to recordings obtained by the Express-News.

“Heavy-set Hispanic male. He may be wearing a brown shirt,” the cop said.

Another cop reportedly said the driver might have a teardrop tattooed on his face and a bunny tattooed on his neck, and he was later reportedly described as wearing a striped shirt.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, Zamorano was identified through a distinctive black shirt with stripes and a hat that matched a surveillance recording made at an immigration checkpoint he allegedly passed through earlier.

A sickening photo posted online Wednesday allegedly shows Zamorano grinning as he leaned out of the driver’s side of the 18-wheeler at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Encinal, Texas, about 120 miles south of San Antonio.

An alleged accomplice, Christian Martinez, 28, told authorities that Zamorano was unaware an air-conditioning unit in the trailer had stopped working, the Express-News said, citing court papers filed against Martinez, who could also face the death penalty.

The documents include alleged text messages between Zamorano and Martinez, including one from 6:17 p.m. — shortly after the dead migrants were discovered — in which Martinez allegedly used code to ask Zamorano, “Where you at?”

“Wya, bro,” the message allegedly said.