File picture for illustration.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
An Indian national in the U.S. has been sentenced to 33 months in jail and ordered to pay $2.4 million for defrauding elderly people in America.
Ashish Bajaj, 29, pleaded responsible on August 4 final yr earlier than District Judge Kevin McNulty in Newark federal court docket to info charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
He was sentenced to 33 months in jail, two years of supervised launch and ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution for his function in a world conspiracy that preyed on elderly victims in New Jersey and all through the U.S., the Department of Justice mentioned on Thursday.
According to paperwork, from April 2020 to August 2021, Bajaj and his conspirators preyed on elderly victims throughout the U.S. by impersonating fraud prevention specialists from numerous banks, on-line retailers and on-line cost firms.
They contacted victims and falsely claimed that they had been fraud prevention specialists employed by respected firms and that the victims’ accounts with banks, on-line retailers, or on-line funds firms had been being focused for fraud.
Bajaj and his conspirators then falsely advised the victims that their fraud prevention efforts required the victims’ help in a sting operation to catch the perpetrators, prosecutors mentioned.
They requested the elderly victims to ship cash from their financial institution accounts to accounts managed by them and falsely promised to return their cash inside just a few days of the purported sting operation.
The victims had been additionally falsely promised that after they despatched the cash, the sting operation would consequence in the arrest of the purported perpetrators. They despatched worldwide wire transfers to varied banks situated in India, China, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
The victims additionally despatched cash by way of a web based software to financial institution accounts held by Bajaj in the United States.
They additional despatched money and cashier checks to Bajaj at an tackle in California. The scheme resulted in losses of over $250,000, in accordance with the paperwork.
