A Montrealer who cheated thousands of American businesses in five years with a fraudulent telemarketing scheme has been sentenced to 30 months in prison in the United States and will have to reimburse at least $ 1.4 million to his victims.
Athanasios Vouloukos, 48, was sentenced on Tuesday for his involvement, along with other accomplices, in this vast scam, can we read in a document from the court of the Northern District of California.
Their ploy was very simple: from a call center operated in Canada, fraudsters randomly contacted small American businesses, tricking them into believing that they had ordered a service to improve their online presence and that they now needed to. pay the bill.
In reality, these services did not exist, one specifies in a summary of the judgment.
$ 3 million withdrawn
Over a five-year period, thousands of companies still paid almost US $ 500 each for these fictitious services.
Thus, the resident of the borough of Saint-Laurent in Montreal fraudulently collected, with his accomplices, more than US $ 3 million.
The victims mailed their checks to mailboxes in the United States which were instructed to forward the mail to Canada.
The majority of the checks were subsequently cashed in Canadian bank accounts.
reimburse the victims
When he pleaded guilty in January 2020, Vouloukos pledged to reimburse an amount of at least US $ 1.4 million in compensation to companies that were trapped by this scheme.
However, the Tribunal also ordered, on Tuesday, the holding of a hearing on October 8 to determine the total amount of restitution he will have to pay.
In addition to his 30-month prison sentence for conspiracy of mail fraud, the Montrealer will have to undergo a three-year supervision period after being released from the detention center.
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