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.
Four Indian-Americans, including Google CEO Sunder Pichai and McKinsey's Chairman of the Americas Vikram Malhotra, are among 42 eminent professionals honoured with a prestigious immigrants' award for their role in strengthening the country and its democratic society.
Sima Kotecha was reporting on the aftermath of the June 23 referendum from the town of Basingstoke when she heard someone saying "Paki", a racist term used for South Asian origin migrants in the UK.
Dr Parag Patel's case came up before a UK General Dental Council (GDC) misconduct hearing this week over his conduct with the female patient, referred to only as Patient 1.
The East African country is notorious for anti-LGBTQ laws which criminalize same-sex relations. After Kambugu was outed by a tabloid, she went into hiding, relying on her family to bring food and supplies.
Nearly 2.3 million people in the UK regret voting for Brexit from the EU in last week's historic referendum, a trend which has come to be referred to as "Bregret", a new survey said today.
Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai and her family have become millionaires as a result of income from her memoir describing life under Taliban rule in Pakistan's picturesque Swat valley and appearances on the lecture circuit around the world.
