Following six other defendants who recently pleaded guilty in a huge telephonic impersonation fraud and susequent money laundering scheme in the US, another Indian American has pleaded guilty.
Mitesh Kumar Patel, 42, A resident of Illinois has joined the other six defendants who have recently pleadedguilty to the conspiracy charges for their involvement in the liquidating and laundering victim payments generated by a huge telephone impersonation fraud and money laundering scheme perpetrated by a chain of India based call centres responsible or defrauding American residents for millions of dollars, Justice department said.
Sunny Joshi of Texa, Jagdish Kumar Chaudhari of Alabama and Rajesh Bhatt 53lorida and Jery Norris, o Texas have each pleaded guilty to a count of money laundering conspiracy, whereas Raman Patel,82, Arizona; Praful Patel,50 of Florida and Jerry Norris, 47 of California have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and money Laundering Offenses.
All of these six men have been in the federal custody since October 2016 and will hence remain detained till their sentences are given out, the department of Justice said.
The six conspirators, Mitesh kumar patel, Jerry Norris, Raman Patel, Joshi, Jagdish Kumar Chaudhari, Bhatt and Praful Patel have admitted to perpetrating a complex scheme in which , Individuals from call centres located in Ahmedabad, India would impersonate as officials from the IRS and USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) and defraud victims located in the US off their money.
The US victims were picked through the data and information sourced through data brokers and other sources. They targetted the US residents and threatened them of penalties, Imprisonment, fines or even deportation. They naver paid this alleged money owed to the government.
The victims who would agree to pay the scammers were instructed to pay through wiring money or were instructed to purchase general purpose relodable cards (GPR).
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All of these fradulently collected funds were immediately sent to a network of “runners”, who would liquidate and launder these funds, the federal prosecutors said.
Miteshkumar Patel had a crew of dozens of domestic runners who worked for him. They liquidated as much as USD25 million in victim funds for the conspirators in this India based call centre and organisational co-defendant HGLOBAL.
Patel used various emails, text messaging and Whatsapp services to communicate with these domestic and India based co-defendants.
Patel bought Relodable GPR cards using the victims PII (Personal Identity Information). These were used to recieve victims funds and later used the victims funds to buy money orders. These money orders were later deposited into bank accounts of India based conspirators after deducting a share of the sum in the name of profit share.
He has trained his group of runners to conduct liquidation schemes and provided them with vehicles to carry out their activities in Illinois and throughout the country. He also directed the co-defendants to open several bank accounts and limited liability companies for use in this conspiracy.
Patel also later admitted to using his gas station in Racine, Wisconsin to liquidate the money from these victims. He also possessed equipment at his illinois apartment to make fraudulent identification documents used by his runners and co-defendants to recieve wire transfers directy from the scam victims.
