An Indian national has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a call center scam that tricked Americans out of millions of dollars by impersonating federal officials, the Department of Justice announced in a statement on Monday.
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Hitesh Madhubhai Patel, who goes by Hitesh Hinglaj, of Ahmedabad, India and his co-conspirators operated an India-based scheme that scammed victims in the US out of millions between 2013 and 2016.
According to the statement, Patel’s employees “impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and engaged in other telephone call scams designed to defraud victims throughout the United States.”
During the scam calls, perpetrators impersonating government employees would threaten the victims with arrest, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged amounts of money owed to the government.
“Those who fell victim were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing general purpose reloadable (GPR) cards or wiring money. Upon payment, the call centers would immediately turn to a network of ‘runners’ based in the United States to liquidate and launder the fraudulently obtained funds,” the Department of Justice said.
Patel was sentenced in Texas on charges of “wire fraud conspiracy…
