Information for Victims in Large Cases
US v. Mario Castro, et al
The indictment charges Mario Castro, 51, Jose Salud Castro, 70, Salvador Castro, 53, Miguel Castro, 55, Jose Luis Mendez, 45, and Andrea Burrow, 49, with mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. According to the indictment, the defendants ran a fraudulent prize-notification scheme that tricked hundreds of thousands of consumers, many of whom were elderly and vulnerable, into paying a $20 or $30 fee to claim a large cash prize. None of the victims who submitted fees ever received a large cash prize, the indictment alleges.
US v. Ankur Khemani, et al
The defendants operated a bogus computer technical support company. Victims would obtain the toll-free number for the phony service through either (1) a pop-up advertisement that would appear on the victim’s computer, or (2) through an Internet search for technical support services. Victims’ calls would be routed to a call center in India, where an individual posing as a technical support technician would obtain remote access to their computers and falsely inform the victims that their computers had been targeted by hackers and/or had been infected with malware. The phony technician would then pretend to perform repairs and/or install unneeded computer programs. The victim would be billed between $300 and $1,500 for the bogus work performed, and would be instructed to send payment, either by U.S. Postal Service or FedEx, to an address inside the United States. Upon receipt of the payments, defendants inside the United States would send the money to defendants in India.
Lance Dominique Mann
Lance Mann has been charged with identity theft for his role in unlawfully obtaining victims’ confidential financial and personal information, including drivers licenses, Social Security cards, and credit card information. Included in the unlawfully obtained information was a list of names, home addresses, and credit card numbers belonging to victims who purchased tickets for tour buses visiting the Grand Canyon. Investigators believe that many of those transactions occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada.
United States v. Javaid Perwaiz, 2:19cr189
As alleged in the indictment and court documents, from at least January 2010 until November 8, 2019, Perwaiz was a licensed physician, board certified to practice obstetrics and gynecology. He was a solo practitioner and operated two different offices in Chesapeake, Virginia. At the time of his arrest, it is estimated he had well over 1,000 active patients. Throughout this time period, Perwaiz submitted tens of thousands of fraudulent claims to various health care benefit programs for unnecessary, uninformed, and/or fraudulent gynecological procedures. As part of his scheme and to justify his bills, Perwaiz would falsely claim that patients asked for the billed procedures/surgeries, falsify symptoms and complaints supposedly made by the patients, and falsely claim to perform diagnostic procedures, among other conduct.
The public is reminded that a criminal indictment contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
United States v. Aleksii Burkov, 15-cr-245
From approximately 2011-2013, Burkov, a national and resident of Russia, ran a website called Card Planet that sold stolen credit card information on a massive scale. The U.S. Secret Service obtained a copy of the back-end server hosting Card Planet and determined that over 150,000 stolen credit card numbers were offered for sale on the site. The numbers appear to have been issued by over 1300 banks. Burkov was arrested while vacationing in Israel in 2015 and extradited to the United States in 2019. The USSS was not able to seize any assets from Burkov and he is likely to be deported to Russia upon serving his sentence.
United States v. Ahmad Abouammo et al.
Defendants were charged with acting as agents of the Saudi government without notice to the Attorney General for their roles in the unauthorized access of Twitter accounts of users who had publicly renounced the Saudi government. Defendants Abouammo and Alzabarah were employees of Twitter and were provided user names that were of interest to the Saudi government by a foreign official/representative of the Saudi Royal Family.
United States vs. Matthew Brent Goettsche et al.
Defendants Goettsche, Balaci, and Weeks have been charged with conspiracy to engage in wire fraud in connection with their roles in BitClub Network. From April 2014 through December 2019, BitClub Network was a fraudulent scheme that solicited money from investors in exchange for shares of purported cryptocurrency mining pools and rewarded investors for recruiting new investors into the scheme. Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and others conspired together to solicit investment in BitClub Network through fraudulent means, including by providing false and misleading figures that BitClub investors were told were “bitcoin mining earnings” purportedly generated by BitClub Network’s bitcoin mining pool. Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and others obtained the equivalent of at least $722 million from BitClub Network investors.
Defendants Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and Abel also conspired to sell BitClub Network shares—which were securities—notwithstanding that BitClub Network did not register the shares with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Weeks and Abel created videos and traveled around the United States and the world to promote BitClub Network and recruit others to invest.
U.S. v. Brandon Demond Frere
Fraudulent student loan forgiveness program that operated from 2014 through November 2018.
Rosanne Day, et al
The indictment alleges that PacNet, under the defendants' direction, was the payment processor of choice for companies that mailed large volumes of fraudulent notifications designed to mislead victims into falsely believing they would receive a large amount of money, a valuable prize, or specialized psychic services upon payment of a fee. From 1994 until September 22, 2016, PacNet served as the middleman between banks and the fraudulent mailers - aggregating the checks, cash, and credit card payments collected by its clients, depositing the payments into PacNet-controlled bank accounts, and then distributing the funds as directed by the clients, according to the indictment. The notifications that induced the payments processed by PacNet were false - the victims who submitted the fees did not receive a large amount of money, a valuable prize, or specialized psychic services, according to the indictment. Many alleged victims were elderly or otherwise vulnerable, according to the indictment.
United States v. Dino Paolucci
The defendant, Dino Paolucci, was charged with wire fraud and securities fraud in connection with his involvement in promoting a stock manipulation scheme, commonly referred to as a “pump and dump.”
United States v. Douglas Gordon
The first two counts of a three-count superseding indictment charge Douglas Gordon, a former co-owner of a chain of Edge Video movie rental stores in Maine, with willfully infringing copyrights of motion pictures by reproducing and distributing counterfeit DVD copies of movies in 2014 and 2016. The third count of the indictment charges the defendant with engaging in a mail fraud scheme from about April, 2014 to about January, 2019. He is further charged in the third count with having established FindrareDVDs (FRD), Lostmoviesfound (LMF) and Lostmoviefinder (LMFinder) websites to advertise the sale of more than 100 motion pictures in DVD format. The FRD, LMF and LMFinder websites allegedly misled customers about the quality of DVD versions of motion pictures and accepted “Mail in” orders as well as “On-line” orders. The indictment alleges customers had expectations based on false representations and material omissions on the websites of receiving an authentic motion picture in a DVD format of good quality. For the purpose of executing or attempting to execute the scheme to defraud, the Defendant is alleged to have received very large numbers of customer orders for DVDs of motion pictures and to have knowingly caused to be delivered by mail, burned DVD copies of movies of inferior quality, or did aid and abet the same.
U.S. v. Pigida et al
Volodimyr Pigida and Marina Bondartenko are charged with operating a Ponzi scheme through their business Trend Sound Promoter. Through the scheme, defendants are alleged to have caused more than $11 million is losses. They are further alleged to have fraudulently used proceeds from their scheme for their own benefit, to include the purchase of houses and vehicles. Finally, the charges allege that the defendants committed fraud by hiding assets and transactions in connection with Trend Sound Promoter’s bankruptcy proceeding.