Tech Support scammers arrested for swindling over $1.3 million from victims

• The trio opened bank accounts for the following entities: ‘22nd Century ITC’, ‘Pro Advisor Solutions’, ‘NY Software Solutions Inc’, ‘Seasia Consulting Inc’, ‘Sav IT’, and ‘Reussite Technologies’.
• The three defendants are charged with a maximum sentence of 20 years of imprisonment for conspiracy of mail fraud and a minimum 2 years of imprisonment for accessing victims’ computers for fraudulent purposes.

Three tech support scammers have been arrested for allegedly conducting scams between 2013 and 2019 and earning a sum of $1.3 million.

What happened?

The three defendants Gunjit Malhotra, Gurjet Singh, and Jas Pal pretending to be from major tech companies call victims warning them that their computers were infected with a virus.

• The scammers also sent fake alert messages which upon clicking redirects to fraudulent websites, thereby convincing the victims that repairs were required.
• The fraudsters then convince the victims to give remote access to their computers, upon which, they access victims’ computers and cause them to malfunction in order to get followup services.

How much money did the scammers make?

Most of the victims paid between $225 and $799, for fake multi-year service plans. However, one of the victims had paid over $136,600 through dozens of calls from the tech support scammers.

The victim’s computers had network system security and networking hardware issues. The tech support scammers served the Russian theme to make the victim believe that the attacks were coming from Russian hackers.

The victim ended up writing at least 18 checks, 8 of them, for "Reussite Technologies" which totaled $66,000 and another 10 checks for "NY IT Solutions Inc" that added up to around $71,000.

According to the complaint filed by FBI Special Agent Carie Jeleniewski, the trio opened bank accounts for the following entities: ‘22nd Century ITC’, ‘Pro Advisor Solutions’, ‘NY Software Solutions Inc’, ‘Seasia Consulting Inc’, ‘Sav IT’, and ‘Reussite Technologies’.

What is the penalty?

The three defendants are charged with a maximum sentence of 20 years of imprisonment for conspiracy of mail fraud and a minimum 2 years of imprisonment for accessing victims’ computers for fraudulent purposes.

Furthermore, Gurjet Singh has been charged with an additional sentence of 2 years for identity theft.