ST. LOUIS – Five people were charged Friday for stealing at least $8 million from victims across ten states, including one Missouri woman, in a tech support scam.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri, Dariona Lambert, 22, Zhamoniq Stevens, 23, Chintankumar Parekh, 51, Mehul Darji, 41 and Sital Singh, 42, were charged with wire fraud.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the group is accused of contacting elderly victims through phone and electronic messages claiming the victims’ savings and retirement accounts had been compromised. The victims were told to transfer funds to the scammers to keep their accounts safe.
Reportedly, the transfers came as gold bars that were bought by the victims and were picked up by a carrier working with the scammers. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the carriers worked with a “handler” who coordinated transportation and shipped the gold bars to others.
Reportedly, Lambert and Stevens were carriers, and Parekh, Darji and Singh were handlers who traveled to victim’s residences to pick up gold bars.
An 82-year-old St. Louis woman fell victim to the scam when the scammers pretended to be from a computer software support team and falsely said her financial accounts had been compromised, the indictment said.
The scammers said she needed to pay money to prevent her funds from being stolen, and she needed to open a new bank account and transfer the money into those accounts and wire money overseas. She was additionally told to purchase $250,000 worth of gold bars.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, on May 1, one of the scammers, Lambert, flew from Florida to St. Louis and rented a car to drive to a parking lot near the woman’s home.
Once Lambert was at the parking lot, the scammers took an Uber to the victim’s home to retrieve the gold bars but was interrupted by law enforcement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Lambert sent a warning message on WhatsApp to her conspirators saying “police.”
Parekh was also in Missouri with Lambert and fled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after Lambert’s alert.
The scammers worked as handlers and carriers to fraudulently obtain gold bars across Arizona, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and several other states.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Parekh and Darji are both in the United States unlawfully and a motion is sought to have them put in jail until trial. Reportedly, Parekh has overstayed his work visa, and Darji was originally removed from the U.S. in 2014.
Each of the scammers were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Lambert, Stevens, and Parekh were originally indicted with that same charge in June.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said wire fraud conspiracy charges carry a penalty of up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
If someone you know is a victim of a cyber scam, report it to the FBI. You can file the complaint online with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov or use 1-800-CALL-FBI.
