The women were targets of what’s known as an impersonator scam, a form of fraud that in recent years has commonly targeted elderly victims. Between them, the pair lost more than $900,000, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Tampa.
The scam spurred tandem investigations from the Hillsborough and Pasco County sheriff’s offices, along with the U.S. Secret Service. The probe culminated this week with the arrest of Pranav Patel, a 32-year-old New Jersey man, who faces a federal wire fraud charge.
The complaint against him details an elaborate scheme that cost the Ruskin woman $170,000, and the Pasco County woman more than $700,000.
The Ruskin woman is identified in the court document with the initials “E.L.” She told investigators she’d handed over several large sums of cash and gold to a man she believed was an officer of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She made the payments to clear what she was told was a federal arrest warrant charging her with money laundering.
The saga began last summer when E.L. was contacted several times by someone she believed was from PayPal. She was told she owed the company $550.
She searched online and called what she mistakenly thought was PayPal’s customer service number. She spoke with a man who said his name was “Andrew Roberts,” the complaint states. He asked for her PayPal account information. When she was unable to provide it, the man transferred her to someone else, who said he worked for their “legal team.”
A different man then introduced himself as “Alvaro Bedeyn.” He said he was a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission and she could search his name in Wikipedia. It is unclear if the man may have been impersonating Alvaro Bedoya, whom President Joe Biden appointed to the FTC in 2022.
The impersonator told the victim she had an arrest warrant and that the only way to clear it was to liquidate her bank accounts and turn the money over to a Treasury agent, according to the complaint.
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