McLean Man Sentenced In Call Center Scam Targeting Older Adult Victims

MCLEAN, VA — A McLean man was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for his role in a call center scam largely affecting older adult victims.

Federal prosecutors say Bruhaspaty Prasad, 33, of McLean, worked with others primarily in India on a tech support scheme. The callers would contact victims by phone and pop-up notifications on computers, claiming they needed help to remove malware. In other cases, the callers would pretend to be from companies like Microsoft and Amazon and claimed the victims had issues with their online accounts.

The callers convinced victims to sign contracts for tech support services that were never provided, prosecutors say. Once victims signed a contract, they were often contacted again for additional services and to pay more fees.

The scheme affected over 1,300 victims from April 2016 through September 2021 with victims' losses totaling more than $1.6 million.

Prosecutors say Prasad was the primary co-conspirator based in the U.S. His role in the scheme was creating several businesses that claimed to offer technical support to clients. During the scheme, Prasad opened three businesses in Virginia which fraudulently received funds from the scheme. Prasad was the sole signatory on the bank accounts for the businesses, and he transferred a portion of proceeds to co-conspirators in India, according to prosecutors. Prasad continued running the businesses and obtaining funds from victims even after receiving several complaints and negative online reviews.

Amazon had investigated the scheme and reported it to the Department of Justice in 2021.

"Amazon is grateful to law enforcement for acting on our referral and thoroughly pursuing this case," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email to Patch. "We have systems and teams in place to investigate and stop fraudulent activity and pursue justice on behalf of our affected customers. We have zero tolerance for impersonation scams and will continue to investigate them to hold bad actors accountable."

The company provides free customer support, so the company encourages customers to be suspicious of anyone charging money for Amazon tech support. If customers receive a communication they believe is not from Amazon, they can report it to the company. Amazon has a web page to assist customers with telling if emails, phone calls, texts or web pages are from Amazon.