Sixteen Indian-origin people in the United States have been charged for their alleged role in a massive identity and stolen credit card theft operation, which has resulted in losses of over 3.5 million USD to individuals, financial institutions and retail businesses.

40-year-old Muhammed Rana of Queens in New York was the leader of the massive fraud operation. He was helped by his deputy 24-year-old Inderjeet Singh.

In total, thirty individuals have been charged till now, as authorities have cracked down on the extensive stolen credit card and identity theft ring.

The group was responsible for stealing the personal credit information of several consumers and costing, financial institutions and retail business more than 3.5 million USD in losses over the course of the alleged scheme.Others charged in the multiple-count indictment are Sonam Kukreja, 26; Balwinder Singh, 36; Ranjet Singh, 30; Ankit Chadha, 29; Kamaljot Singh, 24; Tanveer Sidhu, 25; Gauruv Chhabra, 33; Pradeep Grover, 46; and Gurbachan Singh, 55; Shingara Singh, 28; Sukhjinder Singh, 32; Tajinder Singh, 25; Vinny Maksudpuri (age not given); Varinder Singh, 27, of 118th Street in Richmond Hill, Queens.

District Attorney of Queen, Richard Brown said that the defendants were accused of going to shopping, purchasing high-end electronics and fashion merchandise worth tens of thousands of dollars with forged credit cards.

Brown said the scheme was that defendants ordered new credit cards for consumers and stole those cards out of the consumers’ mailboxes, when they were delivered.

Twenty four search warrants were executed throughout Queens and Nassau counties and numerous things were recovered, including 400,000 USD in cash, several gold coins and gold bars valued each at 1,300 USD, as well as binders with the personal information of hundreds of thousands of firearm, card readers and many amounts of raw material, such as blank credit cards and fake identities.

Indian-origin Federal Prosecutor, Preet Bharara fired

AMandeep