Washington: An Indian national Tuesday was sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison for his involvement in an India-based call centre scam, the US Department of Justice said.
Nishit Kumar Patel, 31, who had pleaded guilty to the charges, January 9, has also been asked by a Florida court to pay USD 2,00,000, forfeit cash and a 2015 Land Rover that was seized in October 2018.
According to court documents, Patel connived with the US-based co-conspirators and the India-based call centres to extort money from American residents by impersonating Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officers between 2014 and 2016. The IRS is the revenue service of the United States federal government.
During this period, they mislead the victims in believing that they owed money to the IRS and would be arrested and fined if they did not pay their alleged taxes back immediately, as per the documents.
The conspirators collected the fraud proceeds by withdrawing cash from prepaid cards purchased and funded by victims; hiring other conspirators (runners) to retrieve money wired by the victims to those runners; and/or hiring runners to open bank accounts into which victims deposited fraud proceeds, revealed the documents.
Four others have already pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme. Alejandro Juarez was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, March 25 while Hemalkumar Shah, Sharvil Patel and Brenda Dozier are currently awaiting sentencing.
J Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, said, “Over the last several years, American taxpayers have been subjected to unprecedented attempts to fraudulently obtain money by individuals impersonating IRS employees. Victimising taxpayers by impersonating IRS employees is a serious crime,” he added.
PTI