Indian arrested in United States over fraud charges

Washington: An Indian has been arrested in the US on charges of fraud for stealing at least USD 800,000 from more than 400 victims, mostly of Indian descent, through a provisional "credit" scheme.

Kishore Babu Ammisetti, 30, who has been charged by federal criminal complaint with fraud offenses stemming from an alleged provisional credit scheme, was arrested on January 25.

Ammisetti, appeared before US Magistrate Judge Donna Martinez in Hartford, Connecticut on Wednesday. He was ordered detained. Federal prosecutors said that Ammisetti entered the US in 2013 on a student visa, which was revoked in 2014.

Ammisetti used Facebook Marketplace and other media to victimise individuals, primarily of Indian decent, who advertised items for sale or rooms for rent. Through this scheme, Ammisetti would contact a victim to express interest in purchasing an item or renting a room.

He would then gather the victim's bank account information and other personal information under the guise of making a deposit to the victim's bank account. He also would offer to provide a "deposit" directly into the victim's account via a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transfer.

Ammisetti would then contact the victim's bank and, posing as the victim, would claim to have made an ATM deposit that did not register on the victim's bank account, complaint alleges. While researching the "unregistered deposit", the bank would credit the victim's account with a provisional credit, it said.

Ammisetti would then contact the victim and claim that the provisional credit to the victim's bank account was a mistaken transfer by Ammisetti to the victim's account. He would then request either a full or partial refund of that money, which the victim would provide via a P2P transfer.

After the bank determined that there was no unregistered deposit to the victim's account, the funds provided as a provisional credit would be removed from the account, federal prosecutors said.