An Indian national in the U.S. on a student visa faces up to 15 years in prison after police allege he scammed an elderly Michigan couple out of $50,000.
Vedantkumar Bhupenbhai Patel, 25, was arraigned May 5 on a charge of larceny of $20,000 or more and obtaining between $50,000 and $100,000 under false pretenses after he was arrested in Toledo, Ohio on April 30 and extradited to Michigan.
Patel, who is not a U.S. citizen and was in the country on a student visa, remained in Macomb County Jail on Tuesday on a $100,000 bond. He faces up to 20 years in prison for false pretenses, and 10 years for larceny.
“People who prey on the elderly are the most despicable type of criminals that I have dealt with in my 38+ years of law enforcement experience, and our department will use every available resource to identify and arrest these types of evil criminals,” Shelby Township Police Chief Robert Shelide said in a statement cited by The Detroit News.
Police allege Patel emailed a Detroit area couple in their 80s claiming they had hundreds of dollars in charges for a Best Buy Geek Squad subscription, and the husband called an included phone number offering help to remove the charges.
That’s when Patel told the husband he noticed $50,000 in other charges he could help eliminate, WXYZ reports.
“And I said, that can’t be right. We don’t have anything like that. No, he said it’s from a pornographic site, a child pornographic site,” the wife, who asked to remain anonymous, told the news site.
Patel then advised the couple to withdraw $50,000 to prevent the charges from going through, and to provide the money to an alleged undercover FBI agent who arrived at their home to pick up the cash.
“They stayed on (the phone) constantly, was telling us what we had to do, how we had to do it and that otherwise, that money would be put into a treasury account with the government and if we don’t do this the way we’re told, we will not get that money back,” the wife explained.
The couple withdrew $30,000 from one bank, and $20,000 from another, and handed it over to the alleged FBI agent.
“We gave him the package, OK,” the wife said. “We were told that they received it, everything was fine, you’ll get your money back, so on and so forth.”
When the couple received another email demanding $100,000 from their retirement account that advised them not to explain the withdraw to their financial advisor, the couple turned to the police, WXYZ reports.
According to India Today, the case “is the fourth such incident in the past three weeks in which an Indian student in the US was arrested for duping senior citizens.”
Shelby Township Police made the case a priority when they learned it involved elderly citizens, with Detective Thomas Verdura pursuing multiple search warrants for Google, Enterprise Rental, T-Mobile and Visa, and utilizing the department’s FLOCK camera system to track down Patel, Macomb Daily reports.
“Our detective that was assigned to the case did a great job. He utilized our FLOCK camera system as well as several search warrants, and charges were authorized. And within about three weeks after the initial report came in, we identified the suspect and had him arrested and in custody,” Lt. Mark Benedettini told WXYZ.
“Unfortunately, the $50,000 that he scammed the elderly couple out of, we believe that he sent it over back to India,” he said. “So, as far as recovering that money, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that.”
The lieutenant noted Patel, who now faces a detainer for deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is also under investigation by the FBI for at least two other scams involving elderly citizens.
According to India Today:
Patel’s arrest for allegedly duping senior citizens follows three similar incidents in the past three weeks, in which Indian students in the US were arrested for duping senior citizens.
Earlier this month, Kishan Kumar Singh was arrested for allegedly trying to swindle money from a 78-year-old woman by impersonating a law enforcement officer.
Last month, two Indian students were held for allegedly posing as government agents and extorting gold and money from an elderly individual.
A Chinese national in the country illegally was also arrested for attempting to scam an elderly Canton woman in December.
Canton Police allege Li Biao, 30, described as “an illegal foreign national,” posed as a “senior fraud investigator” with the woman’s bank in multiple phone conversations in which he convinced her to withdraw large sums from her account, MLive reports.
In conversations over four days in December, Biao allegedly arranged for a “co-worker” to pick up the cash from the 85-year-old woman’s home on two occasions, but was arrested on a third attempt to collect $25,000 after the victim’s family intervened.
