An
Indian national has been
sentenced
to eight
years and eight months
in prison
for participating
in an India-based
call
centre
fraud
in which operators impersonated
US tax officials
to extort money from Americans.
Federal Judge
Virginia Hernandez Covington, who
sentenced Nishitkumar Patel on Monday
in Tampa, Florida, also fined him $200,000 and ordered the forfeiture of cash and his
Land Rover.
He and four others - two of them Indians - had earlier admitted their guilt
in court.
Patel and his accomplices used the India-based
call
centre
to make calls
to people
in the
US pretending
to be tax officials from the
Internal Revenue Service and claiming that they owed taxes, threatened the victims with arrest, according
to court filings.
They ordered the victims
to buy prepaid cash cards
to pay what they claimed were back taxes and sent people
to collect the cards, deposit the payments into bank accounts they opened and turn over the money after deducting a commission, court papers said.
One of the co-conspirators, Alejandro Juarez, was earlier
sentenced
to 15 months
in prison, while Hemalkumar Shah, Sharvil Patel and Brenda Dozier are awaiting sentencing.
When they were charged
in November, officials said that law enforcement officers executed a search warrant Nishitkumar Patel's home and seized $50,000
in cash, hundreds of bank and wire transfer receipts, and 20 electronic devices.
The charges filed
in court described Nishitkumar Patel, 31, Sharvil Patel, 22, and Hemalkumar Shah, 27, as "domestic managers"
for the
fraud who hired people
to collect the payment cards.
India-linked fraudulent tax extortion through threatening phone calls are rampant.
In October 2016, five
Indian companies and 56 people, most of them of
Indian descent, were charged
in a Texas federal court with involvement
in a similar racket.
Last October, 21 people - at least 20 of them of
Indian origin - received sentences ranging between four
years and 13
years, with orders of deportation
for most of them and revocation of
UScitizenship of one.
Three others of
Indian descent were also convicted earlier
in the same
fraud.
Jeff Sessions, who was the attorney general at that time, had said: "The stiff sentences imposed this week represent the culmination of the first-ever large scale, multi-jurisdiction prosecution targeting the India
call
centre scam industry."