Washington, Jun 8 (PTI): Two Indian-Americans in California were indicted today on charges of defrauding hundreds of home owners and other customers along with mail and wire fraud and international money laundering.

Sharanjit Kaur, 36, and Baljit Singh, 47, both of Fresno in California now faces sentencing of 20 years in federal prison and a USD 500,000 fine.

The indictment alleges that between July 2010 and June 2011, Kaur and Singh owned and operated several companies based in Fresno for the sole purpose of defrauding hundreds of customers throughout the US.

Kaur and Singh touted to potential customers that their businesses, Consumer Financial Services, Consumer Credit Repair and Client Financial Services, could provide debt consolidation services.

They also falsely promised that they could renegotiate debts with creditors and mortgage lenders, obtain low-interest loans for customers, assist in avoiding lawsuits, lower car payments, replace high-interest credit cards with low-interest ones, and correct errors in credit reports. Kaur and Singh used a call center in India whose employees would call customers using aliases such as 'Neil McKenzie' or 'Anthony Jones', the Justice Department said.

The indictment alleges that after luring customers into using these purported services, Kaur, Singh and their agents instructed customers to send in monthly payments of USD 500 or more. Even though they collected regular payments from customers, the defendants did not contact creditors on behalf of customers, it alleges.

"Nor were customers informed that the defendants were not in fact providing the promised debt renegotiation services. To mislead customers as to the status of their debts, the defendants sent fake letters from creditors indicating that the customers’ loan modifications had been approved," it said.

"When customers would contact the defendants' companies about late-payment or default notices they had received from their creditors, the defendants and their agents would either hang up on customers or request that customers continue to make service payments to the defendants," the Justice Department statement said.
Customers sent over USD 400,000 in payments to the defendants.

According to the indictment, Kaur and Singh used the funds received from customers for their own benefit. Kaur and Singh also wired a portion of the funds to an individual in Kolkata.