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.
La Habra is a city in the northwestern corner of Orange County. The La Habra Police Department said in a press release that their officers responded at about 4:55 a.m. to a robbery at a 7-Eleven store, Xinhua news agency reported.
The former Chancellor again batted away calls for tax cuts before inflation is under control, saying "we need to have a grown up conversation". At the event in Westminster, he also heaped praise on Boris Johnson, describing him as "one of the most remarkable people I have ever met" who has a "good heart" - but it was "not working" any more.
The vacancy was created when the incumbent Boris Johnson lost the confidence of his party MPs after a series of scandals, and resigned on Thursday. 11 candidate have since thrown their hats into the ring. Among them, Sunak, who chancellor of the exchequer before he resigned last Tuesday, and Suella Fernandes Braverman, who is of Goan descent and is still serving as caretaker attorney general.
Balwani faced 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. After a three-month trial, a jury has found him guilty of all 12 counts. He now faces up to 20 years in prison for each count, The Verge reported late on Thursday.
But the public liking for him was dented when this year he introduced taxes to reduce the government's heavy borrowings. This was followed by controversy over his wife avoiding paying taxes in Britain and instead doing so at a lower rate in India from her dividends from shares in Infosys, the Bangalore-based software giant founded by her father N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Addressing the media outside 10, Downing Street, the 58-year-old embattled British leader, who has faced controversies galore in his 1,079 days in power, said: "It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of the party and therefore a new Prime Minister."
