Wishesh magazine january 2018 Wishesh magazine january 2018 | Page 84

DESI NEWS
Indian Americans Plead
guilty in
84
Money Laundering
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
WWW.WISHESH.COM | JANUARY 2018
Racket
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