Both suspects, Arushobike Mitra and Garbita Mitra, had previously pleaded guilty before a U.S. District Judge.
Washington:
Two Indian nationals have been sentenced to 41 months in prison for their roles in a conspiracy to commit bank fraud by accepting illegally obtained wire transfers worth $1.2 million from victims in the United States, a U.S. attorney said.
Arushobike Mitra, 29, and Garbita Mitra, 25, had previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced Tuesday.
“These defendants and their conspirators preyed on some of our most vulnerable citizens, using deception and threats to coerce them into sending money,” Sellinger said.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court as part of an international fraud scheme, criminal India-based call centers used automated robocalls to contact victims across the country with the intention of targeting U.S. residents, specifically to deceive the elderly.
After contacting the victims through these automated calls, other members of the conspiracy would coerce or trick the victims into sending large sums of money via physical shipments or bank transfers to other members of the conspiracy, including the Mitras, according to a press release .
These conspirators used a variety of schemes to convince victims to send money, including impersonating government officials from agencies such as the Social Security Administration, or impersonating law enforcement officers from the FBI or DEA, and threatening victims with serious legal or financial consequences if they would do that. failed to comply, federal prosecutors alleged.
Another method used by the callers involved convincing the victim that they were speaking to someone from a tech support company and forcing the victim to grant the caller remote access to their PC.
The caller would then gain access to the victim’s bank accounts and make it appear to the victim that the caller had accidentally deposited money into the victim’s bank account, when in fact the caller had simply transferred money from another of the victim’s accounts . The caller would then instruct the victim to return the money by mail or wire transfer to other members of the conspiracy, including the Mitras, the report said.
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