Man pleads guilty in phone scam that used Kentucky addresses. One woman lost $380,000
An Illinois man pleaded guilty in a Kentucky federal court in a scam that cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Satishkumar Rameshchandra Patel pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Patel helped operate the scam out of the Chicago area, but he was charged in Kentucky because the conspirators used addresses in Kentucky to receive fraudulent payments, according to the indictment.
In one case cited in the indictment, the scammers had an older woman in Texas send $48,000 to the address of a Dollar General store in Pulaski County, where someone associated with the conspiracy could pick it up.
Patel admitted that from at least August 2018 to August 2021, he took part in a phone scheme in which people called victims around the country and lied to them in order to get them to send money.
The con men often told victims they were government officials and convinced people they were in legal or financial trouble and needed to send money to resolve the issues or protect their savings, according to Patel’s plea.
Patel provided fake names to others taking part in the scam, as well as addresses where they could direct victims to send money.
Patel’s plea gave one example, in which someone involved in the scheme phone called a woman in California posing as an official with the Social Security Administration.
The caller told her her Social Security number had turned up in a drug investigation and that as a result her money was in danger of being confiscated by the government.
To prevent that, the woman sent a total of $380,000 by Federal Express to addresses in the Chicago area.
Patel picked up two of the shipments, according to his plea.
Patel’s plea document said the government contends there were 10 or more victims of the scam and that it caused substantial financial hardship to one or more of them.
That matters because it affects Patel’s potential sentence.
Patel disagrees with the potential enhancement, according to the plea.
Patel pleaded guilty Dec. 16 in federal court in London before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hanly A. Ingram. Ingram recommended that U.S. District Judge Robert E. Wier accept the plea.
