Indian-origin hacker gets 51 months jail for computer fraud in US
Darpan News Desk IANS, 24 May, 2023 12:52 PM
ew York, May 24 (IANS) A 38-year-old Indian-origin hacker from Virginia was sentenced to more than four years in prison for hacking into computers and stealing customer credit card numbers.
Chirag Patel from Norfolk pleaded guilty to computer fraud and was sentenced by US District Judge G Murray Snow to 51 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
He also was ordered to pay $87,522.25 in restitution, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona said on Monday.
According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel hacked into the Phoenix-based computers of an international hospitality company on numerous occasions.
He then fraudulently transferred and redeemed customer reward points from the company's customer loyalty program.
In addition, Patel also stole credit card numbers and other personally identifying information (PII) from customers and loyalty program members, which were stored in the company's computers.
Patel took screenshots of customers' and members' information, which included credit card numbers and other PII, and saved the screenshots to a Google Drive he controlled.
In total, between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel stole and possessed more than 1,200 credit card numbers, the FBI investigation found.
He used some of the stolen credit card numbers to make unauthorized purchases and also tried to sell some of the stolen credit card numbers.
The US has accused Pakistan of playing a “double game” on fighting terrorism and asked Islamabad to take decisive action against militants operating from its soil to “earn” the American aid.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday boasted that his nuclear button is not just “much bigger and powerful” than the one North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un had but that it also worked.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor traded barbs in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday over making Hindi an official language at the United Nations.
Global Hindu Heritage Foundation and Save Temples Organisation have suspended Telugu singer Ghazal Srinivas as their brand ambassador following his arrest on charges of sexually harassing one of the women employees at its India office here.
A young yoga teacher from Haridwar is quietly making waves in Afghanistan, spreading the ancient Indian science of harmonisation of body, mind and spirit to a rising number of yoga enthusiasts in that country.
An estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Indian H-1B visa holders could be deported if the administration goes ahead with the proposal which is aligned with President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” vision.
