Man put ‘virus’ in older people’s computers to scam them out of $10 million, feds say
A man is accused of playing a “leading role” in a $10 million computer virus scam that tricked older adults into believing their devices were infected, federal officials said.
Vinoth Ponmaran, 34, of India, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, according to a July 20 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
He was arrested on July 15 in Blaine, Washington.
An attorney for Ponmaran did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Thursday, July 21.
From March 2015 through December 2018, Ponmaran is accused of participating in a “fraud ring” that targeted older adults across the U.S. and Canada and convinced them they had a virus in their computer, according to the indictment.
Typically, a pop-up window would appear on a person’s computer saying it had been infected with malware, documents say.
This window directed the user to call a phone number that would give them technical support, documents say.
On other occasions, the pop-up window threatened the user to not restart or shut down their computer because it would cause “complete data loss” or “cause serious damage to the system,” the indictment says.
But there was never a real virus or threat to the person’s device if they did either of those things, documents say.
Once a victim called the number, which didn’t belong to a real company, a person part of the scheme in a call center would pretend they could fix the virus for a fee, documents say.
These fees ranged from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
In some cases, once a person made a payment for their “services” and paid for “lifetime support,” the fake technical support team would then say it wanted to give a refund because its company was going out of business, documents say.
The bogus technical team would say it accidentally refunded the victim too much and would need to be repaid thousands of dollars in gift cards, according to the indictment.
The scam cost roughly 7,500 victims a total of $10 million through various forms of payments, including gift cards, credit cards, personal checks and money orders.
Prosecutors said Ponmaran managed a call center in India.
He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for each charge if convicted.
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Man put ‘virus’ in older people’s computers to scam them out of $10 million, feds say."
