Telemarketing fraud scheme: Indian national sentenced to 3 years in jail in US

A US court on Thursday sentenced an Indian national to three years in federal prison in connection with a telemarketing fraud schemeHimanshu Asri 34 of Delhi had previously admitted to being a key participant in a wideranging telemarketing fraud scheme that targeted and defrauded US residents primarily senior citizens the Department of Justice saidThe 36 months in federal prison will be followed by three years of federal supervised release Acting United States Attorney Richard B Myrus announcedAsri faces deportation proceedings upon completion of his term of incarcerationIn his guilty plea last December Asri admitted that for at least the five years that preceded his arrest in early 2020 he ran a call centre in India that engaged in Tech Fraud a scheme to extract money from computer users by deceiving them into believing that their computers were subject to attacksAlso read Aarey Colony CEO in graft net activists say bring back previous oneAs part of the scheme Asri had popup advertisements appear on computer users screens The ads falsely asserted that a malware was detected on those computers and urged that a telephone number be called for assistance federal prosecutors allegedThose who called spoke to operators at Asris call centre and at other call centres based in India The operators reiterated the lie that a malware was detected on the callers computers and offered them fictitious computer protection services for an exorbitant price according to court papersThose who fell prey to this scam paid on an average USD 482 and some times over USD 1000 and did not receive any actual computer protection service or assistance it saidAccording to the Department of Justice from the call data obtained for a threemonth period it was estimated that over five years Asris scheme led approximately 6500 people to view the deceptive popup ads and encounter call centre operators who made the Tech Fraud pitchIt is estimated that 1950 of those people fell prey to Tech Fraud Asri and his coconspirators defrauded that group of at least USD 94099574 Had all of the attempts to defraud been successful the victims would have lost an estimated total of USD 3133000 it saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever