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A New York man was sentenced to 51 months in prison Jan. 22 for his role in one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul J. Fishman announced last week.
Shafique Ahmed, 55, of Floral Park, New York, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy L. Waldor in Newark federal court to an information charging conspiracy to commit bank fraud. U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson imposed the sentence Jan. 22 in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Ahmed and others were 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. Members of the conspiracy doctored credit reports to pump up the spending and borrowing power associated with the cards.
They then borrowed or spent as much as they could, based on the phony credit history, but did not repay the debts – causing more than $200 million in confirmed losses to businesses and financial institutions.
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; finally, run up large loans.
The scope of the criminal fraud enterprise required Ahmed and his 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.
Ahmed admitted that he and others helped obtain credit cards in the name of third parties – many of which were fictional – then directed the credit cards to be mailed to addresses controlled by members of the conspiracy. He also admitted they knew the cards would be used fraudulently at businesses.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Thompson sentenced Ahmed to five years of supervised release and entered a forfeiture order for $1 million against him.
Over the past three fiscal years, the Justice Department has filed nearly 10,000 financial fraud cases against nearly 15,000 defendants including more than 2,900 mortgage fraud defendants.
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