Woodbridge Man Admits to Role in Credit Card Fraud Scheme

WOODBRIDGE, NJ - A Woodbridge man was sentenced Wednesday to four years in jail for his role in one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman announced.

Babar Qureshi, 63, of the Iselin section of Woodbridge, was originally charged in February 2013 as part of a conspiracy to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards. He pleaded guilty in 2016 and was sentenced Wednesday in Trenton federal court to 46 months in prison.

The scheme involved a three-step process in which he and others would make up a false identity by creating fraudulent identification documents and a fraudulent credit profile with the major credit bureaus; pump up the credit of the false identity by providing false information about that identity’s creditworthiness to those credit bureaus; and finally, run up large loans.

Across the country, Quershi and conspirators maintained more than 1,800 “drop addresses,” including houses, apartments and post office boxes, which they used as the mailing addresses of the false identities. Qureshi’s role in the conspiracy was to take the phony cards and charge large amounts at complicit merchants, who would then pay him a portion of the charge. He used phony bank accounts to conceal his involvement and receive proceeds from the fraud, which he used for personal expenses, including his mortgage, US attorneys said.