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.
In a shocking case, a reclusive 66-year-old French woman was found to be living alongside the badly decomposed body of her elderly mother, who had been missing and presumed dead for several years.
Mehak Saini said she’s standing up for voices silenced during an acrimonious debate that engulfed the Halifax university after the student union pulled out of Canada 150 celebrations in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples.
Police said that the woman’s brother had an affair with a young woman from the suspects’ family. Witnesses said nobody came to her help because they were scared
A Pakistani bride tried to kill to husband by poisoning him but in an unfortunate turn of events, it led to poisoning of 27 family members, some were children. Read on to know more.
More than 200 people were killed when a tunnel collapsed at North Korea’s nuclear test site this month, a Japanese TV channel has reported citing North Korean sources.
The Indian consulate in Milan said it had taken up the incident of attacks with the “highest level of law and order authorities” in the city and urged students not to panic.
