TRENTON – An Iselin man was sentenced to 46 months in prison for his role in one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the U.S. Department of Justice, announced U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman.
Babar Qureshi, 63, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson to count one of an indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Thompson imposed the sentence Jan. 26 in federal court in Trenton.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Qureshi was originally charged in February of 2013 as part of a conspiracy to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards.
The scheme involved a three-step process in which the defendants 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.
The scope of the criminal fraud enterprise required Qureshi and other 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 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.
In addition to the prison term, Thompson sentenced Qureshi to five years of supervised release.
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI’s Cyber Division, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Timothy Gallagher in Newark, with the investigation leading to the sentencing. He also thanked postal inspectors under the direction of Inspector in Charge James V. Buthorn, the U.S. Secret Service, Newark Field Office, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Mark McKevitt, and the U.S. Social Security Administration, Office of the Inspector General, for their roles in the investigation.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Shapiro and Deputy Chief Zach Intrater of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit and Sarah Devlin of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Unit.