Fugitive Pleads Guilty In $200 Million Credit Card Fraud Scam

https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/fugitive-pleads-guilty-200-million-credit-card-fraud-scam

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
District of New Jersey

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Fugitive Pleads Guilty In $200 Million Credit Card Fraud Scam

TRENTON, N.J. – A New York man today admitted his role in one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the Justice Department, Acting U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick announced. Habib Chaudhry, 49, of Valley Stream, New York, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson in Trenton federal court to Count One of an indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Chaudhry was initially charged by complaint in February 2013 and then by indictment in September 2013. Chaudhry had been a fugitive for nearly four years prior to his arrest in January 2017.
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Chaudhry was indicted as part of a conspiracy – led by Tahir Lodhi, Babar Qureshi, Ijaz Butt, and others – to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards. Including today’s plea, 20 people have pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme.

The scheme involved a three-step process in which the defendants would make up a false identity by creating fraudulent identification documents and a phony credit profile with the major credit bureaus; pump up the credit of the false identity by providing bogus information about that identity’s creditworthiness; then borrow or spend as much as they could without repaying the debts. The scheme caused more than $200 million in confirmed losses to businesses and financial institutions.

The scope of the criminal fraud enterprise required the 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 for the false identities.

Chaudhry admitted that he worked with others to obtain fraudulent credit cards in the names of false identities, that he directed that these fraudulent credit cards be mailed to addresses he controlled, and that he and others made charges using these credit cards with no intention of paying back the debts.
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