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 Liberals have until May 30th to respond in writing, and unlike the old paper petitions tabled in the House of Commons, the federal government is obliged to post its answer online.
As many as 3,672 Indian women married to Nepalese men since the promulgation of the new constitution in September last year have become naturalised citizens of the Himalayan nation, the home ministry said on Tuesday.
LONDON — Thousands of junior doctors posted picket lines outside hospitals around England on Tuesday in the first all-out strike in the history of Britain's National Health Service.
John Ridsdel, a Canadian killed by hostage-takers in the Phillipines, was remembered Monday as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship.
The performance by Carrie Grossman, who has adopted the Hindu name Dayashila, was disrupted Thursday by protesters claiming that by singing kirtans she as a white person was wrongly "appropriating" elements of Hinduism
