Indian Man Jailed For 7 Years For Duping Over 6,500 In US, Canada In Computer Fraud Scheme

A statement from the Attorney's Office said that Ponmaran, an Indian citizen, was a leader of a technical support scheme that deceived more than 6,500 victims across the United States and Canada.

Vinoth Ponmaran was arrested in July 2022 in Blaine, Washington.

Source : Facebook

An Indian-origin man in the US has been sentenced to seven years in prison for participating in a scheme that defrauded thousands of victims into buying unnecessary computer anti-virus protection by falsely claiming that malware had infected their machines.

36-year-old Vinoth Ponmaran was arrested in July 2022 from Washington and was sentenced by the US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York on Wednesday (July 31).

A statement from the Attorney's Office said that Ponmaran, an Indian citizen, was a leader of a technical support scheme that deceived more than 6,500 victims across the United States and Canada.

In total, the conspiracy generated more than $6 million in criminal proceeds from at least approximately 6,500 victims, the office said.

Modus Operandi

Since March 2015, Vinoth Ponmaran was a member of a criminal fraud ring based in the US and India that committed a technical support fraud scheme targeting elderly victims located across the US and Canada.  

First, the Fraud Ring caused pop-up windows to appear on victims’ computers, which claimed that a virus had infected the victims’ computers. The pop-up windows directed the victims to call a particular telephone number to obtain technical support.  

The pop-up windows threatened victims that, if they restarted or shut down their computer, it could “cause serious damage to the system,” including “complete data loss.”  

However, no virus had infected the victims’ computers and the technical support phone numbers in the pop-up windows were associated with a legitimate technology company.  

The pop-up windows would cause various victims’ computers to completely “freeze,” thereby preventing the victims from accessing the data or files in their computers.  

In exchange for victims’ payment of several hundred or thousand dollars, the purported technicians remotely accessed the victim’s computers and ran an anti-virus tool, which was free and available on the Internet. 

In addition to his prison sentence, Ponmaran was sentenced to three years of supervised release and forfeiture of over $6 million.