Information for Victims in Large Cases
U.S. v. Davit Simonyan, et al.
This case charges a ring of fraudsters who used skimming devices to steal unwitting victims’ account information from gas pumps, ATMs, and similar common points of sale. The defendants then allegedly used that information to make fraudulent debit and credit cards, which they used to withdraw cash from victims’ accounts and make fraudulent purchases (like hundreds of thousands of dollars of postal money orders). According to the indictment, these crimes were committed in and around San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, and Oklahoma.
United States v. Milton Ayimadu a/k/a Don Milton
The defendant has been charged with hoarding and price gouging in violation of the Defense Production Act of 1950.
U.S. v. Andrey Turchin
The indictment charges TURCHIN with conspiracy to commit computer hacking, two counts of computer fraud and abuse (hacking), conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and access device fraud. TURCHIN and his accomplices perpetrated an ambitious hacking enterprise broadly targeting hundreds of victims across six continents. TURCHIN employed a collection of hacking techniques and malicious software (malware) to gain and maintain access to victim networks. For instance, he often used specially designed code to scan the Internet for open Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports and conduct brute-force attacks to initially compromise victim networks. Once inside the victim’s system, he moved laterally throughout the network and deployed additional malicious code to locate and steal administrative credentials and establish persistent access. The conspirators often modified antivirus software settings to allow malware to continue to run undetected. TURCHIN and his co-conspirators then marketed and sold the network access on various underground forums commonly frequented by hackers and cybercriminals, such as Exploit.in, fuckav.ru, Club2Card, Altenen, Blackhacker, Omerta, Sniff3r, and L33t, among others. As has been publicly reported, the “fxmsp” group has been linked to numerous high-profile data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber intrusions.
U.S. v. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., USA
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., USA is charged with knowingly entering into and engaging in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to increase and maintain prices of pravastatin and other generic drugs sold in the United States. The charged conspiracy began at least as early as May 2013 and continued at least until December 2015.
US v. Mario Castro, et al
The indictment charges Mario Castro, 51, Jose Salud Castro, 70, Salvador Castro, 53, Miguel Castro, 55, Jose Luis Mendez, 45, and Andrea Burrow, 49, with mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. According to the indictment, the defendants ran a fraudulent prize-notification scheme that tricked hundreds of thousands of consumers, many of whom were elderly and vulnerable, into paying a $20 or $30 fee to claim a large cash prize. None of the victims who submitted fees ever received a large cash prize, the indictment alleges.
US v. Ankur Khemani, et al
The defendants operated a bogus computer technical support company. Victims would obtain the toll-free number for the phony service through either (1) a pop-up advertisement that would appear on the victim’s computer, or (2) through an Internet search for technical support services. Victims’ calls would be routed to a call center in India, where an individual posing as a technical support technician would obtain remote access to their computers and falsely inform the victims that their computers had been targeted by hackers and/or had been infected with malware. The phony technician would then pretend to perform repairs and/or install unneeded computer programs. The victim would be billed between $300 and $1,500 for the bogus work performed, and would be instructed to send payment, either by U.S. Postal Service or FedEx, to an address inside the United States. Upon receipt of the payments, defendants inside the United States would send the money to defendants in India.
Lance Dominique Mann
Lance Mann has been charged with identity theft for his role in unlawfully obtaining victims’ confidential financial and personal information, including drivers licenses, Social Security cards, and credit card information. Included in the unlawfully obtained information was a list of names, home addresses, and credit card numbers belonging to victims who purchased tickets for tour buses visiting the Grand Canyon. Investigators believe that many of those transactions occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada.
U.S. v. Hector Armando Kellum
Hector Armando Kellum was charged with participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to allocate customers and rig bids for, and stabilize, maintain, and fix prices of, generic drugs sold in the United States from at least as early as March 2013 until at least June 2015.
United States v. Javaid Perwaiz, 2:19cr189
As alleged in the indictment and court documents, from at least January 2010 until November 8, 2019, Perwaiz was a licensed physician, board certified to practice obstetrics and gynecology. He was a solo practitioner and operated two different offices in Chesapeake, Virginia. At the time of his arrest, it is estimated he had well over 1,000 active patients. Throughout this time period, Perwaiz submitted tens of thousands of fraudulent claims to various health care benefit programs for unnecessary, uninformed, and/or fraudulent gynecological procedures. As part of his scheme and to justify his bills, Perwaiz would falsely claim that patients asked for the billed procedures/surgeries, falsify symptoms and complaints supposedly made by the patients, and falsely claim to perform diagnostic procedures, among other conduct.
The public is reminded that a criminal indictment contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
United States v. Aleksii Burkov, 15-cr-245
From approximately 2011-2013, Burkov, a national and resident of Russia, ran a website called Card Planet that sold stolen credit card information on a massive scale. The U.S. Secret Service obtained a copy of the back-end server hosting Card Planet and determined that over 150,000 stolen credit card numbers were offered for sale on the site. The numbers appear to have been issued by over 1300 banks. Burkov was arrested while vacationing in Israel in 2015 and extradited to the United States in 2019. The USSS was not able to seize any assets from Burkov and he is likely to be deported to Russia upon serving his sentence.
United States v. Ahmad Abouammo et al.
Defendants were charged with acting as agents of the Saudi government without notice to the Attorney General for their roles in the unauthorized access of Twitter accounts of users who had publicly renounced the Saudi government. Defendants Abouammo and Alzabarah were employees of Twitter and were provided user names that were of interest to the Saudi government by a foreign official/representative of the Saudi Royal Family.
United States vs. Matthew Brent Goettsche et al.
Defendants Goettsche, Balaci, and Weeks have been charged with conspiracy to engage in wire fraud in connection with their roles in BitClub Network. From April 2014 through December 2019, BitClub Network was a fraudulent scheme that solicited money from investors in exchange for shares of purported cryptocurrency mining pools and rewarded investors for recruiting new investors into the scheme. Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and others conspired together to solicit investment in BitClub Network through fraudulent means, including by providing false and misleading figures that BitClub investors were told were “bitcoin mining earnings” purportedly generated by BitClub Network’s bitcoin mining pool. Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and others obtained the equivalent of at least $722 million from BitClub Network investors.
Defendants Goettsche, Balaci, Weeks, and Abel also conspired to sell BitClub Network shares—which were securities—notwithstanding that BitClub Network did not register the shares with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Weeks and Abel created videos and traveled around the United States and the world to promote BitClub Network and recruit others to invest.