AUSTIN – A US court has sentenced an Indian national to 20 years in prisonin the Southern District of Texas for operating and funding India basedcall centers that conned American victims of millions of dollars from 2013to 2016.

Hitesh Madhubhai Patel, aka Hitesh Hinglaj, 44, who hails from Ahmedabad,was sentenced on the charges of fraud and money laundering. The sentence isalso followed by three years of supervised release.

US District Judge David Hittner sentenced him for the charges of wire fraudconspiracy and general conspiracy to commit identification fraud, accessdevice fraud, money laundering, and impersonation of a federal officer oremployee.

Patel was also ordered to pay restitution of $8,970,396 to identifiedvictims of his crimes.

“The defendant defrauded vulnerable US victims out of tens of millions ofdollars by spearheading a conspiracy whose members boldly impersonatedfederal government officials and preyed on victims’ fears of adversegovernment action,” said Acting Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of theJustice Department’s Criminal Division in a statementlink.

Besides impersonation, the call center employees were found to engage intelephone call scams designed to con victims by threatening them witharrest, imprisonment, fines, or deportation for failing to pay allegedmoney owed to the government.

“Those who fell victim to the scammers were instructed how to providepayment, including by purchasing general purpose reloadable (GPR) cards orwiring money,” the Department of Justice said. “Upon payment, the callcenters would immediately turn to a network of ‘runners’ based in the US toliquidate and launder the fraudulently obtained funds.”

The “sentence demonstrates the department’s commitment to prosecutinghigh-level perpetrators of such nefarious schemes. Even fraudstersoperating scams from beyond our borders are not beyond the reach of the USjudicial system.”