June 26, 2018:

On Monday, Two Indian Americans, Owners of a Bulk-mailing Company in suburban Chicago were charged with swindling US Postal Service of atleast $16 million.

Owner and Operator of Prodigy Mailing Services, Yogesh Patel and Arvind Lakkamsani, defrauded USPS by forging documents and secretly using an official date stamp to fraudulently authenticate payment of postage for than 80 Million pieces of mail.

According to Charges, Patel and Lakkamsani schemed with a 3rd Defendant, David Gargano, to fraudulently caused USPS to deliver the numerous bulk mailings without the payment.

Trio forged a USPS clerk’s signature on verification forms and secretly used an official postal service date stamp to make it falsely appear that the clerk had authenticated postage, the charges allege.

From 2010 to 2015, Defendants caused a loss to the postal service of at least $16 million, according to the charges.

Each of the three defendants, Patel, 58, of Orlando, Florida, Lakkamsani, 57, of Northbrook, Illinois and Gargano, 51, of Barrington, Illinois have been charged with one count of mail fraud. Arraignments in the US District Court in Chicago have not yet been scheduled, a media release said.

According to the charges, Gargano-owned and Illinois-based Direct Mail Resources Inc, which collected a fee to match customers seeking to make bulk mailings with companies who could perform those services, such as Prodigy. Gargano referred two energy companies to Prodigy for bulk mailing services.

Two Energy companies provided millions of dollars to defendants to pay the postage for Companies’ bulk mailings. Instead of using those funds to pay postage, the defendants split the money among themselves and used it for their own benefit, the charges allege.

Patel and Lakkamsani fraudulently maintained a key to a postal service mail unit, which was located inside Prodigy’s facility, and used the key to secretly access an official date-stamp without the USPS’ knowledge or approval.

It has been alleged that, By forging Postal Clerk’s signature and fraudulently stamping the mailings, two Indian American made it falsely appear that the verification forms which identified the amount of postage paid for the bulk mailings were authentic and that postage had been appropriately paid.

Source HT

Picture Source :