Anandkumar Jayantila Nayee has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for cheating victims (File)
An Indian-American man has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for cheating victims in a telephone fraud scheme, an official has said.
Anandkumar Jayantila Nayee was held responsible for at least USD 150,000 in victim losses during the telephone fraud scheme, said Benjamin Greenberg, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
From January 2014 to early 2017, Mr Nayee, who had previously pleaded guilty, conspired with others to defraud victims in an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) impersonator impersonator scam, according to court documents.
His co-conspirators contacted victims by telephone and made fraudulent representations to them, including that the victims owed income tax payments to the IRS or owed fees for grants or loans that they had purportedly received.
Mr Nayee's co-conspirators instructed the victims to deposit payments related to the taxes or fees that they purportedly owed onto debit cards and into bank accounts controlled by Mr Nayee and his co-conspirators.
Mr Nayee and his co-conspirators then received and retained the victims' payments, federal prosecutors alleged.
According to court papers, from January 2014 through February 28, 2014, a co-conspirator purchased Green Dot prepaid debit cards and provided the full debit card numbers to Mr Nayee, who resided in India at the time.
Mr Nayee then caused the prepaid debit cards to be registered in the names of real people and notified his co- conspirator once the cards had been funded by victims of the telephone fraud scheme.
The co-conspirator then used the prepaid debit cards to purchase money orders and deposited the money orders into bank accounts specified by Mr Nayee who had moved to Miami from India in 2015.
He and his co-conspirators picked up funds that had been sent via money transfer by victims of the telephone fraud scheme and deposited those funds into accounts controlled by Nayee and his co-conspirators.