Indian Gets 900 Days Jail & $635 K Fine in U.S. Scam

Another person is now indicted in the United States and will be facing 29 months (approx. 900 days) in jail for the call center scam in the US. He has been sentenced after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Moin Idrishbhai Pinjara pleaded guilty on Nov 20, 2021. Pinjara is not a US citizen and is expected to face removal proceedings following his imprisonment. He is the fourth one to be convicted in this case.

Pinjara happens to be an Indian citizen, and between December 2019 and July 2020, he was a runner in an Indian-based call center scam.

Callers in India would convince the targeted people that federal agents were investigating them and would convince mostly elderly targets that they needed to leave parcels at a designated place. This normally meant liquidating of savings of the targets. Pinjara would use aliases and fake identification documents to pick up the parcels which the victims had mailed.

Then, once money was placed at the designated place, runners like Pinjara would pick up the money parcels and simply scoot.

Throughout the investigation, several victims were found to have been duped. Before Pinjara, three others, Viral Gandhi, Burhan Syed, and Myisha Carter were ordered to serve a 71-month sentence. All four of them have to pay restitution.