Friday, December 1, 2017

Indian-origin men plead guilty in US call centre scam

Four Indian-origin men have pleaded guilty to charges of their involvement in a multi-million US dollar telephone impersonation fraud and money laundering scheme in the US perpetrated by India-based call centres.
Nisarg Patel, 26, of New Jersey, Dilip Kumar Ramanlal Patel, 30, of Florida and Rajesh Kumar, 39, of Arizona each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering offences. The pleas were entered before US district judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas.
All three have been in federal custody since they were arrested in October 2016.
In a related case, Dipak Kumar Sankalchand Patel, a resident of Pennsylvania, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He has been in federal custody since his arrest in May this year.
Nisarg, Dilip and Rajesh and 53 others, besides five India-based call centers have been charged for frauding American people through a money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas in October last year.
According to admissions made in connection with their pleas, the three men and their accomplices perpetrated a complex scheme in which people from from call centers located in Ahmedabad called people living in the US, posing as officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the accused targeted and threatened people in the US with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay money, which the accused alleged they owed to the US government.
Those who agreed to pay money to the scammers were instructed how to make the payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money. After the payment, the call centers would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently obtained funds.
In connection with his guilty plea, Nisarg admitted that beginning in around June 2013 and continuing through December 2015, he acted as a domestic runner in the criminal scheme, liquidating victim funds for conspirators from India-based call centers and organisational co-defendant 'HGLOBAL'.
He communicated about the fraudulent scheme with various India-based co-defendants via telephone, email and WhatsApp text messaging.


Probe into call centre scam leads police to Ahmedabad


The state police have begun a joint operation along with counterparts in Gujarat into a multi-crore call centre racket operating from the city that was used to dupe citizens of the USA through online transactions.
"Our team has reached there and has begun the investigation with Ahmedabad Police, who were alerted to nab the culprits and back the investigation," said police sources, who also added that Mumbai Police have been alerted about developments in the case.

City police have busted two call centres involved in US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scam in the last four days and arrested eight persons. Police have also seized over 50 computer hard disks from the two fake call centres which are being decoded by cyber experts. Police have found a list of names of 4,000 US citizens who are believed to have been victimized by the scam.
Police sources said an insider spilled the beans on the scam, and also supplied information that it was being run from Gujarat.

A city police official landed in Ahmedabad on Saturday in search for one Rajesh Bhai alias Rajesh Khan and his accomplices, whose names have surfaced in the investigation.
Preliminary investigation has found that the modus operandi for the fake call centres is identical to the infamous multi-crore IRS scam run by Shaggy alias Sagar Thakkar who was arrested by Mumbai Police earlier. Mumbai Police investigation had found that the IRS scam originated in Gujarat and Ahmedabad was the starting point of the crime, with call centres operating in tandem with the ones located in Mumbai. The fraudsters were well trained in American accents.
"The fraudsters were trained to detect soft targets, mostly aged tax evaders living in USA, and then they used to make fake calls to the targets impersonating officials from US revenue department asking to deposit funds to avoid legal actions. Many fell prey to the prank and deposited amounts ranging from $500 and more through bitcoin, a digital currency," an investigating official said.

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