Departamentul de Justitie american a anuntat ieri ca a dezmembrat si arestat o parte din infractorii ce faceu parte dintr-o retea ce falsificau carti de credit, in una din cele mai de proportii fraude de acest gen. Operatiunea a inceput in 2007, s-a intins in cel putin 28 de state americane avand conectii in tari precum Romania, Pakistan,
India, Emiratele Arabe, Canada, China si Japonia. Prejudiciul este estimat la cel putin 200 de milioane de dolari.
Federal agents in four states arrested 13 people today for allegedly
creating thousands of phony identities to steal at least $200 million in
one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the
Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
The activity described in a complaint unsealed today describes a
sprawling criminal enterprise that stretched across dozens of states and
numerous countries. The defendants charged in the complaint allegedly
fabricated identities to obtain credits cards and doctored credit
reports to pump up the spending and borrowing power associated with the
cards. They would then borrow or spend as much as they could based on
their fraudulently obtained credit history and not repay the debts,
looting businesses and financial institutions of more than $200 million
in confirmed losses.
This morning, hundreds of law enforcement officers from the FBI and
the U.S. Postal Inspection Service arrested 13 defendants and searched
13 locations in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. All
the defendants are charged with one count of bank fraud. The defendants
are scheduled to appear later today before U.S. Magistrate Judge
Madeline Cox Arleo in Newark federal court.
“This type of fraud increases the costs of doing business for every
American consumer, every day,” U.S. Attorney Fishman said. “Through
their greed and their arrogance, the individuals arrested today and
their conspirators allegedly harmed not only the credit card issuers,
but everyone who deals with increased interest rates and fees because of
the money sucked out of the system by criminals acting in fraud rings
like this one.”
“The criminal activity described in today’s complaint highlights the
activity of an extensive, sophisticated, organized scheme, executed
against U.S. financial institutions, which, in turn, affects every
citizen of the United States,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Velazquez
said. “This elaborate network utilized thousands of false identities,
fraudulent bank accounts , fake companies, and collusive merchants to
defraud financial institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in
order to facilitate extravagant lifestyles they could otherwise not
afford. The arrests today are the result of the relentless and tenacious
work of the United States Attorney’s Office, U.S. Postal Inspection,
U.S. Secret Service, the Social Security Administration, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and numerous financial institutions.”
According to documents filed in this case:
The defendants and their conspirators stole hundreds of millions of
dollars through a scheme repeated thousands of times to create more than
7,000 false identities and fraudulently obtain tens of thousands of
credit cards (the “fraud cards”). The scheme involved a three-step
process in which the defendants would:
- “Make up” a false identity by creating fraudulent identification
documents and a fraudulent credit profile with the major credit bureaus.
- “Pump up” the credit of the false identity by providing false
information about that identity’s creditworthiness to the credit
bureaus. Believing the furnished information to be accurate, the credit
bureaus would incorporate this material into the false identity’s credit
report, making it appear that the false identity had excellent credit.
- “Run up” large loans using the false identity. The higher the
fraudulent credit score, the larger the loans that the defendants could
obtain. These loans were never repaid, and the defendants reaped the
profits.
The Sham Companies
The enormous size and scope of the Criminal Fraud Enterprise required
the defendants and others to construct an elaborate network of false
identities. Across the country, the defendants and their co-conspirators
maintained more than 1,800 “drop addresses,” including houses,
apartments, and post office boxes, which they used as the mailing
addresses of the false identities.
They created dozens of sham companies that did little or no
legitimate business, obtained credit card terminals for the companies,
and then ran up charges on the fraud cards. To accept payments in the
form of credit cards, a business must establish a merchant account with
an entity known as a merchant processor. The merchant processor provides
the business with equipment to process credit cards, receives payments
from credit card companies for credit cards run at the business, and
deposits those payments, minus a fee, into the business’ bank account.
When the merchant processors shut down accounts operated by the
conspirators for fraud, they would apply for new terminals and create
new companies.
The sham companies also served as “furnishers,” providing the credit
bureaus with false information about the credit history of numerous
false identities of people who purportedly worked at or owned the sham
companies.
Tradelines
The defendants used sophisticated methods—including a network of
black-market businesses called “tradelines” providers—to commit fraud.
Tradelines come in two varieties: primary tradelines and authorized
user tradelines. Primary tradelines are lines of credit in a credit
history. If a credit card user has primary tradelines in good standing,
it can have a significant impact on the user’s credit score, enabling
the user to borrow more from credit card issuers. The defendants,
however, trafficked in fraudulent primary tradelines.
A second kind of tradeline is the “authorized user” tradeline, where a
credit card holder adds another, so-called “authorized user,” to a
credit card account. This raises the credit score of the authorized
user, who inherits some of the primary user’s credit history.
Some defendants created and sold fake lines of credit for false
identities made up by other defendants. These fraudulent primary
tradelines were then used to increase the credit limits on fraud cards,
so that the defendants could reap even larger profits. Defendants used
the authorized user tradelines to create new identities.
Complicit Businesses
The defendats also relied upon complicit businesses, including
several jewelry stores in the Jersey City, New Jersey area to extract
money from the fraud cards. The complicit businesses would allow the
defendants to conduct sham transactions on the fraud cards and would
then receive the proceeds from the credit card companies and split them
with the other conspirators. These complicit businesses maintained
multiple credit card merchant processing accounts at the same time. By
operating dozens of accounts, these businesses furthered the conspiracy
by allowing more fraudulent transactions to be processed before the
merchant processors shut down the account. The proceeds from these
merchant terminals were deposited into various business checking
accounts, and the money was paid out to the owners of the complicit
businesses, along with other defendants and conspirators.
Lavish Spending
The conspiracy generated enormous profits for the defendants—even
though they spent millions of dollars sustaining the elaborate network
of drop addresses and running credit reports on the thousands of false
identities. Records of the New York and New Jersey Departments of Labor
reveal that many of the defendants have no reported legitimate
employment in the last five years. Nonetheless, the defendants used the
proceeds of the criminal enterprise to buy luxury automobiles,
electronics, spa treatments, expensive clothing, and millions of dollars
in gold. They also stockpiled large sums of cash. Law enforcement
discovered approximately $70,000 in cash in the oven of one defendant.
The defendants also moved millions of dollars through accounts under
their control and wired millions of dollars overseas. An analysis of 169
bank accounts of the defendants, sham companies, and complicit
businesses has identified $60 million dollars in proceeds that flowed
through the accounts, much of it withdrawn in cash. The conspirators
wired millions of dollars to Pakistan, India, the United Arab Emirates,
Canada, Romania, China, and Japan. Due to the massive scope of the
conspiracy, which involved over 25,000 fraudulent credit cards, loss
calculations are ongoing. Final figures may grow beyond the present
confirmed losses of more than $200 million.
The investigation that produced today’s arrests involved cyber crime
investigators from the FBI and has been ongoing for more than 18 months.
It previously resulted in the arrest of four other individuals and the
seizure of more than $2 million in gold from a jewelry store in Jersey
City.
The bank fraud count with which the defendants are charged is
punishable by a maximum potential penalty of 30 years in prison and a
fine of $1 million.
U.S. Attorney Fishman praised special agents of the FBI’s Cyber
Division, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge David
Velazquez, for the investigation leading to today’s arrests, as well as
postal inspectors under the direction of Acting Postal Inspector in
Charge Marie Kelokates and the U.S. Secret Service, under the direction
of Special Agent in Charge James Mottola. He also thanked the U.S.
Social Security Administration for its role in the investigation.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez
Liebermann, chief of the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property
section of the Economic Crimes Unit, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel
V. Shapiro of the General Crimes Unit, Zach Intrater of the Economic
Crimes Unit, and Barbara Ward of the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Newark.
The charge and allegations contained in the complaint are merely
accusations, and the defendants are considered innocent unless and until
proven guilty.
Defendants:
| Name | Age | Residence |
| Babar Quereshi |
59 |
Iselin, New Jersey |
| Muhammad Shafiq |
38 |
Bellerose, New York |
| Ijaz Butt |
53 |
Hicksville, New York |
| Qaiser Khan |
48 |
Valley Stream, New York |
| Shafique Ahmed |
52 |
Floral Park, New York |
| Habib Chaudhary |
45 |
Valley Stream, New York |
| Raghbir Singh |
57 |
Hicksville, New York |
| Muhammad Naveed |
35 |
Flushing, New York |
| Khawaja Ikram |
40 |
Staten Island, New York |
| Nasreen Akhtar |
37 |
Jersey City, New Jersey |
| Mohammad Khan |
48 |
Staten Island, New York |
| Azhar Ikram |
39 |
Howard Beach, New York |
| Shahid Raza, a/k/a “Abid Mian” |
44 |
Valley Stream, New York |
| Vernina Adams |
31 |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Sat Verma |
60 |
Iselin, New Jersey |
| Vijay Verma |
45 |
Iselin, New Jersey |
| Tarsem Lal |
74 |
Iselin, New Jersey |
| Vinod Dadlani |
49 |
Lyndhurst, New Jersey | | |
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