In Washington, four Indians and one Pakistani plead guilty to charges for their role in a massive telephone impersonation, fraud and money laundering scheme in the US perpetrated by India based call centers.
Three Indians – Rajubhai Patel aged 32, Viraj Patel 33, Dilip Kumar Ambal Patel 53 years and a Pakistani National Fahad Ali who is 25 years old. They pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy before the US District Court.
Hardik Patel who is 31 years old is an Indian National. On June 2, he plead guilty to wire fraud conspiracy before the same court.
The Department of Justice said that the sentencing dates are pending for all the five defendants.
Based on the statements in his June 2 guilty plea, from August 2012, Hardik owned and managed the day to day operations of an India based scam call center before leaving to the US.
While in India, Hardik as a manager, communicated extensively via email, text and other means with various India based co defendants to operate the scheme and exchange scripts used in the scam. Hardik also to coordinated the processing of payments from scammed victims, to obtain and exchange the lead lists used by callers to target the US victims. Then the process of exchanging spreadsheets containing the personal identifying information (PII) of US persons misappropriated by the scammers to register reloadable cards used in the scheme.
He even managed the payroll and kept detailed records of profits and expenses for various associated scam call centers.
According to his June 6 guilty plea, Rajubhai Patel operated as a runner and assisted a co defendant in managing the activities of the crew of the other runners, based primarily out of Illinois.
Viraj Patel involved in the conspiracy between April and September, 2013.
Dilipkumar operated as a runner in Southern California along with the other co defendants based in the region.
Fahad worked as a member of a crew of runners operating in Chicago, Illinois, the Southern District of Texas and elsewhere throughout the country.
On October 19, 2016, 56 individuals and five India based call centers have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by the Federal Grand Jury in the Southern District of Texas.
