The three men and their accomplices perpetrated a complex scheme
Press Trust of India | New York ,September 9, 2017
All three have been in federal custody since they were arrested in October 2016
Four Indian-origin men have pleaded guilty to charges of their involvement in a multi-
million USD 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
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.
Dilip Kumar admitted that he to had served as a runner, liquidating victim scam funds
per the instructions from his accomplices in India, who were running the fake call
centres.
He communicated via phone and email in furtherance of the criminal scheme with his
India-based associates, including by sending lists of re-loadable card numbers to be
activated and loaded with funds siphoned off from the victims.
Kumar also operated as a runner, laundering scam proceeds from reloadable cards and
purchasing money orders using those funds in and around south-central Arizona at the
direction of both domestic and India-based co-defendants.
He admitted to using fraudulent identification documents, including drivers' licenses, to
receive wire transfers of money directly from victims of the fraud scheme.
First Published: Sat, September 09 2017
In a recent wire fraud, four Indians and one Pakistani national have been found guilty
of spearheading a multi-million dollar call center scam involving overseas money
laundering conspiracy. All five criminals performed financial fraud involving the use
of telecommunications and information technology targeting hundreds of Americans.
Rajubhai Patel (32), Viraj Patel (33), Dilip Kumar Ambal Patel (53), and Fahad Ali (25),
a Pakistani national, have all pleaded guilty of their roles in the said hoax. Whereas
Hardik Patel (31), a resident of New Jersey, admitted of committing the wire fraud
gambit before the US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of
Texas today.
The culprits impersonated as US tax and immigration officers to dupe victims all over
America. The scam was targeted at victims who were pressurized into paying in the
name of the government. Otherwise they were intimidated with threats of resultant
imprisonment, deportation or fines.
According to statements made during Hardik Patel’s guilty plea, it indicates that the
duties to execute the complex plan were divided between all.
Hardik used to manage most of the routine operations such as operating the scheme,
exchanging scripts with other accused, execution of payments with victims and the
whole impersonating procedure.
Rajubhai Patel handled the liquidation process of victim’s funds from Illinois.
On the demand of another accused, Viraj Patel operated in such fraudulent activities
beginning in 2013. Later on, he entered the US scenario.
Assisted by other co-defendants, Dilip Kumar Ambal Patel worked as a runner in
South California.
As a member of runners, Fahad Ali as well covered the regions of Chicago, Illinois
area, the Southern District of Texas.
There has been an infamous history of India-based call center scams in the past. Either
a tech supported scam begins infecting foreign computers or starts deceiving people by
impersonating and laundering money. Many such dodgy businesses have made the news
very often. In this case, the sentencing dates are scheduled for August, 2017 for all five
accused.
Source: http://www.dqindia.com/call-center-scam-4-indians-and-1-pakistani-dupe-americans/
Albert Wu, Game Developer, Art Director
Answered Mar 22
To answer your question:
If you read recent the history and political issues between Pakistan and India, you will
understand that they do it because most Indians hates Pakistan.
They not only pretend to be Pakistani when they are caught though, I have heard some of
these calls on Youtube, and some of them would claim to be Chinese haha, and just like
with Pakistan, India also has territorial disputes with China.
A side note:
First, scammers try to pretend to be American first. That’s their intended demographic for
the most part. A lot of Americans, specially elderly people, puts a lot of trust in their
government and institutions and scammers takes advantage of this.
This is why they are often assigned with names like “John Smith”. Terrible really, because
most scammers have a very strong accent. They don’t even put the effort to imitate the
American accent at all.
For one, they do this because they are trying to make the idea that they are working for
the IRS more believable.
Second, Americans for the most part don’t really like foreigners doing their tech support,
customer service etc. They don’t trust them because they feel foreigners have no idea of
what they are doing, and accents makes it worse because it makes them think you are
uneducated. This is why some of them gets caught. I know this because I used to work
in a call center full of Hispanics.
Bryant Scott, works at East Carolina University
Answered Jul 26
I had this happen to me also. They claimed to be from the US; I gave them a hard time
and they told me they were from Pakistan. Pretty straightforward. Many Indians have
been busted lately so I agree that theyre attempting to deflect the attention on to
Pakistan. If you are surprised by their candor, remember that they aren’t professionals—
they’re morons.
Gauravi Pal
Answered Oct 26 2016
They were claiming to be American NOT Pakistanis. There is no way they could have pulled
off the scam pretending to be Pakistanis.
Not giving the scammers a free pass. What they did was wrong. But the notion that they
pretended to be Pakistanis makes no sense in the context of the scam.
Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-were-the-Indian-IRS-scammers-claiming-to-be-Pakistani
Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON: Four suspects have pleaded guilty to fraudulently collecting hundreds of
millions of dollars from tens of thousands people, says the US Justice Department.
The department has charged a total of 61 individuals and entities — all Indians — in one
of the worst impersonation fraud in the US history. The gang particularly targeted the
Pakistani-American community because of their vulnerability. The scam began in June
2013 and continued through December 2015. This was the period when the Pakistani
community in the United States felt particularly vulnerable because of the rapidly
deteriorating US-Pakistan relations and some of them were easily persuaded to believe
that they need to pay the scammers to avoid arrest.
This correspondent was among those thousands of Pakistanis who received a call from
the scammers and later visits to pay centres in Virginia showed that majority of victims
at those centres were Pakistani citizens, particularly those living in the United States on
visas.
The US Justice Department has also set up a website for victims, raising hopes that once
the case is settled, they may be able retrieve the money they lost. On Friday, the
department issued a statement saying that this multi-million-dollar telephone impersonation
fraud and money laundering scheme was perpetrated by India-based call centres.
On Friday, Nisarg Patel, 26, of New Jersey, Dilip Kumar Ramanlal Patel, 30, of Florida
and Rajesh Kumar, 39, of Arizona 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. On October 27, 2016, the Justice Department
charged a total of 61 individuals and entities for their alleged involvement in a
transnational criminal organisation that victimised tens of thousands of persons in the
United States through fraudulent schemes and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars
in losses.
Law-enforcement officials arrested 20 individuals in the United States and 32 individuals
in India in October 2016 and charged them with the fraud. Five call centres in Ahmedabad,
India, were also charged. More arrests were made later.
The indictment, unsealed in a court in Texas, alleges that the defendants were involved
in a sophisticated fraudulent scheme organised by conspirators in India, including a
network of call centres in Ahmedabad. Using information obtained from data brokers and
other sources, call centre operators allegedly called potential victims while impersonating
officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or US Citizenship and Immigration
Services.
The call centre operators then threatened potential victims with arrest, imprisonment,
fines or deportation if they did not pay taxes or penalties to the government. If the victims
agreed to pay, the call centres would then immediately turn to a network of US-based co-
conspirators to liquidate and launder the extorted funds as quickly as possible by purchasing
prepaid debit cards or through wire transfers.
The prepaid debit cards were often registered using misappropriated personal identifying
information of thousands of identity theft victims, and the wire transfers were directed by
the criminal associates using fake names and fraudulent identifications. The Justice
Department said the co-conspirators allegedly used “hawalas”, in which money is
transferred internationally outside of the formal banking system, to direct the extorted
funds to accounts belonging to US-based individuals.
One of the call centres extorted $12,300 from an 85-year-old victim from San Diego,
California, after threatening her with arrest if she did not pay fictitious tax violations. On
the same day that she was extorted, one of the US-based defendants allegedly used a
reloadable debit card funded with the victim’s money to purchase money orders in Frisco,
Texas.
The indictment also alleges that the defendants extorted $136,000 from a victim in
Hayward, California, who they called multiple times over a period of 20 days, claiming to
be IRS agents and demanding payment for alleged tax violations.
The victim was then directed to purchase 276 stored value cards which the defendants
then transferred to reloadable debit cards. Some of the victim’s money ended up on cards
which were activated using stolen personal identifying information from US-based victims.
The conspirators would at times allegedly use alternative fraudulent schemes in which the
call centre operators would offer the victims small short-term loans or advise them that
they were eligible for grants. The conspirators would then request a good-faith deposit to
show the victims’ ability to pay back the loan, or payment of a fee to process the grant.
The victims of the alleged scam never received any money after making the requested
payment.
Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2017
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