Bhogavalli recruited Americans to his firm to carry out the fraud

The accused quit his job at IBM in 2004 to set up Tekdynamics, an IT consultancy firm in Dallas; duped people by collecting huge amounts on pretext of tax dues

HYDERABAD: A 50-year-old Narsimha Rao Bhogavalli, founder of Tekdynamics firm and IT entrepreneur settled in Dallas, Texas in the USA, allegedly duped a number of US citizens by swindling `500 crore deposited by them for paying taxes.
Narsimha Rao, who hails from Hyderabad, quit his job at IBM  in 2004 to set up Tekdynamics, an IT consultancy firm in Dallas.
Tekdynamics had filed 104 labour condition applications for H1B visa and two labour certifications for green card from fiscal year 2013 to 2015. The firm was ranked 2,309 among all visa sponsors in USA in an attempt to recruit employees.

Narsimha accepted applications from various people from Pakistan and other countries to work in his firm.
“Tekdynamics company is based in Greenway Drive - Suite 290 Irving, Dallas, USA and Narsimha has recruited hundreds of people by providing green cards. Narsimha indulged in illegal activities by duping American people on the pretext of tax dues and collected huge amounts of money from victims,” sources said.
It was also revealed that Narsimha and his staff had collected around 242 deposits of cash and money orders worth `100 crore. The businessman also collected money orders worth `60 crore through his bank account in Bank of America. During the investigation, it came to light that he had recruited Americans to work in the firm in US.

These employees were used to collect amounts from victims, who were already threatened by the call centres’ staff operating from India.
“The FBI officials have collected bona fide statements from victims who disclosed the phone numbers from which they received calls. Based on the numbers, FBI officials investigated into the illegal money collection scam and found these funds were illegally transferred to India,” sources said.
The FBI officials also alerted the Indian government and sought a report on the activities of Narsimha.  Earlier, local police carried out raids on call centres located in Ahmedabad and Pune in connection with this scam.

How the extortion happened

• Callers posing as officials with the Internal Revenue Service and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement told unsuspecting victims on the other end that they had failed to pay taxes or that they were at risk of deportation
• The calls scared Americans into paying nonexistent tax dues
• The scam was primarily run out of a network of five call centres in Ahmedabad
• The US Senate Aging Committee received more than 1,100 calls from senior citizens on its fraud hotline in 2015
• An 85-year-old woman of California was conned into paying $12,300 by one of the call centres for some “fictitious tax violations”
• The indictment accuses the US arm of the network of grabbing the cash off the prepaid cards and then laundering the money
• If victims agreed to pay, the call centres would turn to a network of US-based co-conspirators to liquidate and launder the extorted funds by purchasing prepaid debit cards, which were often registered with misapproporiated information
• The call centers also offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee
• The case involves more than 15,000 victims and more than $300 million in stolen money.
• The bust is the largest single domestic law enforcement action yet in this scam
• The names and information of the potential targets were purchased through data brokers
• “Runners” would then be responsible for retrieving the payments of the scammed funds and then depositing them in bank accounts