Nirav Patel, a 44-year-old Indian national living illegally in the United States, has been handed a 12-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating a cold-blooded fraud scheme that defrauded senior citizens of $400,000.
Patel’s operation, rooted in Chicago, extended its malicious tentacles through Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Exploiting a legal loophole, Patel secured an Illinois driver’s license despite his unlawful presence in the country. Using that license, he travelled across the Midwest, collecting cash and gold from elderly victims—many of whom had been tricked into thinking they were protecting themselves from identity theft.
The scam, exposed in December 2024, involved impersonators posing as government agents. According to federal prosecutors, this scheme targeted elderly victims with text messages and emails purportedly warning that their Amazon accounts had been compromised.
When the victims responded to the messages, they were redirected to scammers posing as federal agents who convinced the victims that they fell pretty to identity theft who needed to withdraw their life savings to be held in phony US Treasury or FTC trust accounts for safekeeping.
In reality, their life savings were being siphoned off. “The money… was stolen and ultimately transferred to accounts controlled by the scammers in India,” the statement added. “The fraudsters kept the victims on the hook by calling them constantly, sometimes for up to 12 hours a day. The scammers also threatened victims with criminal liability if they told their friends or family what was going on.”
Patel’s role in this predatory operation was shockingly direct. Trial testimony “established” that he personally visited elderly victims to retrieve stolen assets. In one egregious instance, he collected $77,000 in gold bars from a woman using a walker and reliant on oxygen, at her assisted living facility.
His illegal presence in the US was not in dispute. According to federal evidence, Patel crossed the border near Vancouver, eventually “connecting with the fraudsters” in Georgia before becoming a key on-ground agent in the Chicago-based scam.
In February 2025, a federal jury convicted Patel of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of illegal entry into the US under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Patel’s plea that he was unaware of the fraud fell flat in court. In delivering the 12-year sentence, the judge rejected Patel’s defense that he “had no idea what was going on,” pointing out that scammers had trusted him with hundreds of thousands of dollars—clear proof of his complicity.
The investigation was led by Homeland Security Investigations, in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies including the Edwardsville Police Department, Merrill Wisconsin Police Department, Lincoln County Wisconsin Sheriff’s Office, and Franklin Indiana Police Department.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump banned citizens from 12 countries from travelling to the US, with another seven countries facing partial travel restrictions. The US has said that the move was needed to protect against “foreign terrorists” and other security threats.
Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be affected by the latest travel ban. Entries for seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will be partially restricted.
