Indian Man Jailed For 7 Years For Duping Over 6,500 In US, Canada In Computer Fraud Scheme

<p>An Indian-origin man in the US has been sentenced to seven years in prison for participating in a scheme that defrauded thousands of victims into buying unnecessary computer anti-virus protection by falsely claiming that malware had infected their machines.</p> <p>36-year-old Vinoth Ponmaran was arrested in July 2022 from Washington and was sentenced by the US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York on Wednesday (July 31).</p> <p>A statement from the Attorney's Office said that Ponmaran, an Indian citizen, was a leader of a technical support scheme that deceived more than 6,500 victims across the United States and Canada.</p> <p>In total, the conspiracy generated more than $6 million in criminal proceeds from at least approximately 6,500 victims, the office said.</p> <h3>Modus Operandi</h3> <p>Since March 2015, Vinoth Ponmaran was a member of a criminal fraud ring based in the US and India that committed a technical support fraud scheme targeting elderly victims located across the US and Canada. &nbsp;</p> <p>First, the Fraud Ring caused pop-up windows to appear on victims&rsquo; computers, which claimed that a virus had infected the victims&rsquo; computers. The pop-up windows directed the victims to call a particular telephone number to obtain technical support. &nbsp;</p> <p>The pop-up windows threatened victims that, if they restarted or shut down their computer, it could &ldquo;cause serious damage to the system,&rdquo; including &ldquo;complete data loss.&rdquo; &nbsp;</p> <p>However, no virus had infected the victims&rsquo; computers and the technical support phone numbers in the pop-up windows were associated with a legitimate technology company. &nbsp;</p> <p>The pop-up windows would cause various victims&rsquo; computers to completely &ldquo;freeze,&rdquo; thereby preventing the victims from accessing the data or files in their computers. &nbsp;</p> <p>In exchange for victims&rsquo; payment of several hundred or thousand dollars, the purported technicians remotely accessed the victim&rsquo;s computers and ran an anti-virus tool, which was free and available on the Internet.&nbsp;</p> <p>In addition to his prison sentence, Ponmaran was sentenced to three years of supervised release and forfeiture of over $6 million.</p>

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