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.
A 71-year-old Bangladeshi-origin imam, who was bludgeoned to death in February, was killed by two ISIS supporters because they viewed his practice of Islamic healing as "black magic", prosecutors have told a UK court.
Britain's broadcast regulator today rejected complaints that it was inappropriate for a hijab- wearing Muslim reporter to cover the terrorist attacks in Nice in July.
A woman of Indian origin was charged on Saturday with killing her nine-year-old step daughter whose lifeless body was found in a bathtub in their home, according to media reports.
The release of an Indian migrant accused of trying to abduct a small girl from a Sicilian beach resort has riled conservative Italian politicians and sparked calls for his deportation.
Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, appearing to temper his hard-line approach to tackling immigration, said on Monday that he wants to come up with a plan that is "really fair" to address the millions of undocumented immigrants now in the US.
