He was on the run and we tracked him down in Singapore.
If you’ve ever gotten one of those calls where someone tells you they are from the IRS and you owe money, surely you hung up! However thousands of gullible people did not hang up and sent this Indian crook their hard-earned money.
Well one more of the international crooks ripping us off will now be behind bars.
Thanks to reader Charles for tipping me off about this story, hereis the US Justice Departmentnews about Hitesh Madhubhai Patel aka Hitesh Hinglaj, 43, of Ahmedabad, India:
(By the way, I like the fact that we are now seeing mention of the nationality of crooks more prominently mentioned sparing us from having to spend time playing the secret decoder ring game with the criminal’s name.)
Indian national convicted of role in call center scam that victimized thousands in the U.S.
HOUSTON – An Indian national has entered a guilty plea for his role in operating and funding India-based call centers which defrauded thousands of victims out of millions of dollars between 2013 and 2016.
Hitesh Madhubhai Patel aka Hitesh Hinglaj, 43, of Ahmedabad, India, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud as well as a general conspiracy to commit identification fraud, access device fraud, money laundering and to impersonate a federal officer or employee.
“Hitesh Patel played a prominent role in this massive, India-based fraud scheme that bilked vulnerable Americans out of millions of dollars,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This important resolution would not have occurred without the assistance of our Singaporean colleagues, to whom we extend our deep appreciation.”
Patel and his conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which employees from call centers in Ahmedabad, India, impersonated officials from the IRS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). They also engaged in other telephone call scams designed to defraud victims throughout the United States. U.S. victims were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government.
Those who fell victim to the scammers 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.
In his plea, Patel admitted to operating and funding several India-based call centers from which the fraud schemes were perpetrated, including organizational co-defendant call center HGLOBAL. Patel frequently corresponded by email and WhatsApp messaging with co-defendants to exchange credit card numbers, telephone scam scripts, deposit slips, payment information, call center operations information, instructions and bank account information. The scripts included impersonation of IRS, USCIS, Canada Revenue Agency and Australian Tax Office personnel as well as payday loan, U.S. government grant and debt collection fraud schemes.
Patel also received monthly income and expense reports to his personal email from the call centers and used his Indian cell phone number to access GPR cards through automated telephone systems on many occasions.
A co-defendant described Patel as “the top person in India and the boss for whom most of the other defendants worked.” Another co-defendant claimed Patel was arrested in India in 2016, but paid a bribe and was released. Additionally, Patel admitted he was accountable for approximately $25-65 million.
Patel was extradited from Singapore in April 2019 to face charges in this large-scale telefraud and money laundering scheme. Singapore authorities apprehended Patel at the request of the United States pursuant to a provisional arrest warrant in September 2018 after Patel flew there from India.
As I have said before, the President should regularly highlight all of the scams his Justice Department is busting.
Editor: As you know I have been deep in the weeds of the President’s offer to local elected officials and state governors to determine if they want to receive refugees later in 2020. It is frankly a bureaucratic morass and I needed a break from it so I had a look at some ‘frauds and crooks’ news this morning.
Please visit Refugee Resettlement Watch because there are new posts there every day like this one:Appomattox County, Virginia says no thanks to refugees, likely first in the nation county to say NO!
For a change, this is really disturbing news for a whole host of reasons.
Before getting to the story that you may have seen because it was fairly widely reported, learn what a Brazilian butt lift entails.See here.
I sure hope our tax dollars in no way support this foolish (deadly!) medical procedure.
From theUK Daily Mail(where photos are always the best):
Botched cut-rate operations at plastic surgery clinics operated by FELONS in Florida cost 13 women their lives – but state law can do nothing to close down the lethal businesses
At least 13 women have died after undergoing plastic surgery at Florida clinics founded by felons, a new investigation reveals.
They came for discounted butt lifts and tummy tucks from surgeons in world-renowned South Beach, Florida.
But these women were left with complications that cost them their lives, after operations that were performed by surgeons hired by for felons, USA Today’s investigation revealed.
Dr Osakatukei Omulepu had failed his board exams multiple times, and had never been board certified in plastic surgery, says the Daily Mail.
It dug into the sordid histories of four clinics founded by people had been convicted of crimes – mostly financial ones – but were allowed to run cosmetic surgery shops that crowded patients in and cut corners to make more money more quickly.
The clinics, where women died of fat embolisms, deadly mixtures of sedatives and puncture wounds to organs, were cited for these deaths and for dirty operating rooms.
Yet they were never shut down. Blindspots in regulatory oversight and hamstrung lawmakers allowed these facilities to continue operating despite the littany of problems – in one case, even while the owner was waiting for his prison sentence to start.
[….]
Juan Hernandes was convicted in a $1.2 million Medicare billing fraud case while running Spectrum Aesthetics
Juan Hernandesco-founded Spectrum Aesthetics in 2012. He and his business partner, Evelyn Parrado werecharged with fraudulently billing $1.2 million to Medicare for drugs from the pharmacy they ran together.
Under the impression that Spectrum was staffed and run by board certified surgeons, the court allowed Hernandes to continue to operate the clinic.
He employed and oversaw the physicians there, including Dr Osakatukei Omulepu, who had failed his board exams multiple times, and never been board certified in plastic surgery.
Yet the unqualified surgeon performed Brazilian butt lifts, the most dangerous cosmetic operation.
During two such operations, he punctured or stabbed organs including the liver and small intestine.
A surgical sponge was left inside Porche Campbell, 40, when she had a procedure there.
Nicola Mason, 46, came to Spectrum from Maryland for a Brazilian butt lift.
But, a complaint she filed against Dr Omulepu claims he performed a tummy tuck – the wrong surgery – on her, instead.
And the unwanted tummy tuck she got left Mason with large scars on the side of her abdomen.
Dr Omulepu’s records claim that he determined that Mason wasn’t a good candidate for butt lift, according to USA TODAY, and that the two instead agreed upon her tummy tuck.
Last year, Adianet Galvan visited New Life Plastic Surgery for the same risky procedure: a Brazilian butt lift.
She suffered the same fate countless others have under the knife. Galvan died of a fat embolism, according to USA Today’s analysis of her autopsy records.
‘I never thought my daughter would come to this country and die at the age of 30,’ her mother, Arelys Gonzalez told USA Today. [Were these women in the country legally?—ed]
The Department of Justice announced charges have been filed against 18 crooks who have defrauded Americans out of millions of dollars by building and using skimming devices to steal money from bank accounts in at least 18 states.
The cool thing about the Justice Department press release is that we don’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out where this latest bunch of foreign crooks are from—they have provided a handy chart to inform us! Most are Romanians!
18 Members Of International Fraud And Money Laundering Conspiracy Charged In Manhattan Federal Court
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), Troy Miller, Director, Field Operations, New York, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), and James P. O’Neill, the Police Commissioner for the City of New York (“NYPD”), today announced the unsealing of an indictment and two superseding indictments charging 18 defendants with participating in an international conspiracy to commit a variety of offenses, including access device fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
[….]
FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “An extremely frustrating thing to experience, you grab cash from an ATM but then find out your bank information was stolen and your account drained.
The scheme detailed here cost victims money, time, and effort to get their finances returned and their identities restored, which can be an infuriating long process. The FBI New York Cyber Crimes Task Force and our law enforcement partners have worked exhaustively to find the members of this criminal organization, and the arrests and charges are a testament to their hard work stopping these thieves from creating more havoc for anyone trying to access their hard-earned money.”
[….]
[The crooks] participated in a transnational organization that engaged in what is colloquially referred to as “ATM skimming” (the “Skimming Organization”). The Skimming Organization unlawfully obtained victim account holders’ debit card account information by using advanced technological devices to surreptitiously record the debit card numbers and personal identification numbers at automatic teller machines (“ATMs”), and then manufacturing counterfeit and fraudulent debit cards that bore the victim account holders’ account information. The Skimming Organization’s members then used those cards to fraudulently withdraw cash from victims’ bank accounts.
[….]
The defendants carried out hundreds of ATM skimming operations across the U.S., including in New York and at least 17 other states. The scheme defrauded financial institutions and individual victims of more than $20 million.
Below is a screenshot of the first part of the DOJs chart. Is this what Open Borders Inc. might be referring to when they tout ‘new American’ entrepreneurs?
Go to the press release, here, for the whole list!
But, it sure strikes me that there must be more to this story than we are being told!
My first question is how does a 29-year-old, Latif Mohamed Chowdhury, aka Gulam Latif Chaudhury, who is not a Pharmacist, come to own two pharmacies and set up this elaborate scheme to get his hands on dangerous drugs and bilk insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid out of hundreds of thousands of dollars? A 29-year-old! Clearly there is something more.
Indeed I wonder how he managed such a light sentence—4 years—when he could have gotten twenty asnoted herein an earlier article about his arrest.
Did he cut some deal with the feds to help them find bigger fish involved in the scheme?
This is thepress statement from the US Justice Department on Chowdury’s sentencing. Thanks as always to readers who find important stories like this one that doubtless few will ever hear about otherwise.
Former Pharmacy Owner Sentenced for Prescription Medication Fraud
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former pharmacy owner was sentenced today [September 27th—ed] to four years in prison for fraudulently filling and dispensing thousands of prescription medications, including opioids, outside the usual course of professional practice.
“Chowdhury blithely violated his position of trust,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “Chowdhury’s warped business philosophy led him to illegally distribute a significant number of prescription medications, including dangerous, addictive opioids. Moreover, his reckless actions add to the financial cost of health care as he fraudulently billed at least $500,000 to health insurance programs for prescriptions that were never filled.”
According to court documents, Latif Mohamed Chowdhury, aka Gulam Latif Chaudhury, 29, operated and controlled two now-defunct pharmacies known as Alexandria Care Pharmacy LLC (ACP-1) and Alexandria Care Pharmacy Store #2 LLC (ACP-2). Chowdhury has never been a licensed pharmacist and has no medical qualifications. Nonetheless, between August 2015 and February 2016, Chowdhury fraudulently operated ACP-1 and ACP-2 by personally filling and dispensing thousands of dosage units of medications, including opioids, without a licensed pharmacist on-site. Chowdhury used the identities of licensed pharmacists, without their permission, to carry out his scheme.
“Chowdhury used his trusted position to enrich himself at the expense of others,” said Timothy M. Dunham, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office. “Today’s sentencing makes it clear that the illegal distribution of opioids will not be tolerated. The FBI will work closely with our partners to continue to investigate allegations of healthcare fraud.”
Chowdhury admitted to fraudulently billing health insurance benefit programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, for refills of prescription medications that were not delivered to customers even though his pharmacies received payment for these prescriptions. Chowdhury also submitted fraudulent health insurance claims in the names of pharmacy customers for medications that were not authorized by any physician, and were not dispensed to any of the customers, in order to enrich himself through illicit profits generated by ACP-1 and ACP-2.
I’m posting this story from Georgia because you have to laugh sometimes!
Honestly, regular old run-of-the-mill fraud—food stamps, Medicare, charity, and so forth— is what I expected to be writing about when I launched ‘Frauds and Crooks’ in January, but the numbers of serious crimes and murders perpetrated by ‘new Americans’ caught me by surprise. And, it can get pretty distressing.
Soooo…
When I saw this story, thanks to reader Robert for sending it, I figured we could lighten up and laugh for a change. Fake dentists! The ‘dentist’ on the left is in the country illegally. Photo at Fox 5 http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/police-2-charged-with-practicing-dentistry-without-licenses
This storyis from the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
2 Cobb women accused of running unlicensed dental practice for 9 years
Two women are facing felony charges after Cobb County police said they had been operating a dental practice without a license for nearly a decade.
Bianca Zambrano-Blanco, 35, and Carolina Rojas Morales, 40, were both arrested Tuesday, according to police spokeswoman Officer Sydney Melton.
[….]
Cobb police opened an investigation into the practice in January after a woman, identified in an arrest warrant as Lina Banciu, said she received a botched root canal there.Banciu’s husband, Ruben Banciu, told Channel 2 Action News his wife was recommended to Morales through word of mouth. The woman wanted to save money and agreed to undergo the procedure when Morales told her it would only cost $500, the news station reported.
However, Banciu was in pain for days after the procedure. According to her husband, she drove back to the practice and demanded a refund. When she got there, another patient there was in tears with a swollen face, Banciu told Channel 2.
An arrest warrant obtained by AJC.com accuses Morales of doing Banciu’s root canal improperly and causing irreparable damage to the woman’s tooth.
Investigators found records that indicate the unlicensed practice dated back as far as 2010, Melton said. Police found numerous victims.
[….]
Morales was booked into the Cobb County jail, where she is being held on a $25,000 bond, records show. Zambrano-Blanco was also booked into the Cobb jail, where she is being held on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer.
I guess this is an example of the immigrant entrepreneurial spirit that the New American Economysays is helping to bring economic boom times to American towns and cities. Right?
HOUSTON – An Indian national has entered a guilty plea for his role in operating and funding India-based call centers which defrauded thousands of victims out of millions of dollars between 2013 and 2016.
The Department of Justice announced charges have been filed against 18 crooks who have defrauded Americans out of millions of dollars by building and using skimming devices to steal money from bank accounts in at least 18 states.
