A foreign national was sentenced to a federal prison term exceeding six years for orchestrating a tech support fraud scheme that preyed on elderly Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Kartik Saini ran the scheme alongside co-conspirators, according to the Justice Department. Victims were deceived with false claims that their computers had been breached. A separate lie told those same victims that their bank accounts had been compromised as well.
The scheme was designed to target senior citizens living in the United States. The Justice Department did not specify in its account how many victims were affected or the total dollar amount lost, but the targeting of elderly Americans was a deliberate element of the operation.
Saini's conviction and the resulting sentence of more than six years in a federal facility reflect the Justice Department's continued focus on fraud cases involving vulnerable populations. The agency confirmed that co-conspirators participated in carrying out the deception alongside Saini, though it did not detail their individual roles or whether additional charges are pending against them.
The false claims made to victims, that their devices had been infiltrated and their finances put at risk, formed the core of the scheme Saini and his associates used to defraud seniors across the country.