(Image source from: indiawest.com)
7 Indian Americans have pleaded guilty in a massive Money laundering racket believed to have connections with India based call centers. The telephone impersonation fraud case involving money laundering scheme in the US was running in around 5 states within the US. Miteshkumar Patel, a 42 year old resident from IL, and his team of 6 other Indian American defendants have pleaded guilty in a conspiracy charge involving money liquidation and laundering through telephone impersonation fraud.
The racket involving India based call centers were responsible for defrauding American residents and looting hundreds of millions of dollars, as stated by Justice Department. This conspiracy involved Jagadish kumar Chaudhuri of AL, Sunny Joshi and Rajesh Bhatt of TX, Raman Patel of AZ, Prafful Patel of FL, Jerry Norris of CA along with Miteshkumar, all of which pleaded guilty on the count of money laundering and also conspiracy to commit fraud.
The individual pleas from all 6 culprits were entered before US District Court Judge David Hittner of southern TX between September 22 and November 13. All the six men have been in custody following their arrest in Oct 2016. And they will be detained until their pending sentencing dates are confirmed.
According to the details in the plea all the six men along with their call centre in Ahmedabad, India; there was a complex scheme of perpetrators who pronounced themselves as officials of IRS and USCIS to engage residents in interaction. Then imposing a ruse to defraud the victims into payments, all over US. They also threatened US residents with arrest, imprisonment and fines also deportation of some people, if the dues were not paid.
Victims were then guided through wired transfer of money including purchase of General Purpose Reloadable cards or GPR cards. The Federal Prosecutors said, “Upon payment, the call centers would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently obtained funds.”
According to guilty plea from Miteshkumar Patel, he managed a team of around 6 domestic runners who were active in this criminal scheme. They liquidated around US $25 million in victim funds. The money was received by India based call- center for co-defendant HGLOBAL. Miteshbhai communicated with his team of runners in US and India, via whatsapp, emails and text messages for this fraudulent scheme
Patel and his team purchased re-loadable GPR cards which were registered for using the misappropriated personal identifying information (PII) of unsuspecting victims. Miteshbhai also trained his team on how to conduct all this conspiracy and provided them with vehicles to proceed with these fraudulent activities not just in IL but throughout the country.
He also trained the runners he managed, on how to conduct the liquidation schemes, provided the team with vehicles to conduct their activities in Illinois and throughout the country, and directed a co-defendant to open bank accounts and limited liability companies for use in the conspiracy. He used a gas station he owned at Racine Wisconsin to liquidate victim’s funds. He also made fraudulent documents at his IL apartment.
By Minu Manisha
