A New Jersey jewelry store owner has been sentenced to 24 months in prison for his role in a credit card fraud scheme that caused more than $200 million in losses to businesses and financial institutions.
Vinod Dadlani, 53, of Lyndhurst, NJ, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson.
Dadlani was the owner of Tanishq Jewels on Newark Avenue in Jersey City, the Record reported.
Dadlani was indicted in October 2013 as part of a conspiracy – led by Tahir Lodhi, Babar Qureshi, Ijaz Butt, and others – to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey. Since then, 19 people, including Dadlani, have pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme.
Authorities said that in the scheme, the defendants would make up a false identity by creating fraudulent identification documents and a phony credit profile with the major credit bureaus. They would then pump up the credit of the false identity by providing bogus information about that identity’s creditworthiness. Then they borrowed or spent as much as they could without repaying the debts, according to the release.
Many of these debts were incurred at Dadlani’s store, among many other locations, according to the release. During his guilty plea proceeding, Dadlani admitted he worked with other conspirators who came to his store and allowed them to swipe cards he knew did not legitimately belong to them. Dadlani would then split the proceeds of the phony transactions with the conspirators.
The scope of the criminal fraud enterprise required Dadlani’s conspirators to construct an elaborate network of false identities. Across the country, the conspirators maintained more than 1,800 “drop addresses,” including houses, apartments and post office boxes, which they used as the mailing addresses for the false identities, authorities said.
In addition to the prison term, the judge sentenced Dadlani to two years of supervised release and ordered him to pay forfeiture of $411,000.
Read more at NJ.com