(Image source from: Darpan Magazine)

An American federal judge has sentenced an Indian national to seven and a half years in prison over call-center scam extorting Americans.

Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington, besides sentencing the 23-year-old Sharvil Patel, also fined him $80,000 on Thursday in Tampa, Florida.

He was the fourth Indian to be sentenced within two months in the scams where U.S.-based persons worked with operators in Indian call-centers impersonating American tax officials.

Two other Indians belonging to Shravil Patel's ring were sentenced to prison last month - Nishitkumar Patel, 31, to eight years and nine months, and Hemalkumar Shah, 27, to eight and a half years.

Another Indian, Mehboob Mansurali Charania, was sentenced last month in Atlanta to 16 months in prison and ordered to pay back over $200,000 to his victims.

According to court documents, Sharvil Patel and his accomplices used India-based call-centers to make calls to people in the U.S. pretending to be tax officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and claiming that they owed taxes, threatened the victims with arrest.

They ordered the victims to buy prepaid cash cards and sent people to collect the cards, deposit the payments into bank accounts they opened and turn over the money after deducting a commission, court papers said.

When they were charged last November, officials said that law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at the home of Nishitkumar Patel and seized $50,000 in cash, hundreds of bank and wire transfer receipts, and 20 electronic devices.

Two non-Indians involved in their scam have also been given prison terms.

According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George, India-linked fraudulent tax extortion through threatening phone calls are widespread and more than 15,000 victims have suffered over $75 million in losses since October 2013 to telephone scammers impersonating tax officials.

In October 2016, the Texas federal court has charged five Indian companies and 56 people, most of them of Indian descent, with involvement in a similar racket.

In October last year, 21 people, including 20 Indian origin people, received sentences ranging between four years and 13 years, with orders of deportation for most of them and revocation of U.S. citizenship of one.

By Sowmya Sangam