Indian-origin man sentenced in $2M call centre fraud targeting US senior citizens

New York: An Indian-origin man has been sentenced to over six years in prison for his involvement in a nearly $2 million scheme to defraud senior citizens by using call centres abroad.

Giving him the 75-month sentence on Wednesday, Federal Judge William Jung also ordered Pranav Patel to forfeit $1.79 million that was collected from seniors in Florida and elsewhere.

According to court documents, Patel worked as a “money mule” — collecting money or gold from victims — and was convicted of money laundering, which he admitted to, in December.

“Preying on vulnerable, unsuspecting elderly victims to rob them of their hard-earned money is despicable,” Secret Service Special Agent Robert Engel said after the sentencing in the federal court in Tampa, Florida.

“Even worse, the defendant’s co-conspirators posed as government agents to defraud victims of nearly $2 million, threatening them with arrest if they didn’t follow their demands,” he said.

Patel was busted when he went to a house to collect what he thought was a box of gold.

Law enforcement officials, who had him under surveillance, arrested him immediately after he picked up the package.

According to court papers, his co-conspirators operating from call centres abroad fraudulently identified themselves as officers from the Treasury Department or other agencies and told the victims that there were “warrants for their arrest”.

They were told that they had to pay them to avoid arrest, the documents said.

Sometimes, they also told victims that they had to give their money and gold to the “officers” for safekeeping, according to the documents.

Patel, 33, who lived in New Jersey, drove down to Florida and elsewhere on the East Coast to collect money and gold from seniors who had been threatened by people from the call centres.

One of his victims told the court that because of the scam, he could not pay his mortgage and had to sell his house.

IANS