NEWARK, N.J. – A New York man was indicted today by a federal grand jury in connection with a scheme to defraud banks by using stolen and altered identities to fraudulently obtain credit cards and then using those cards to make millions of dollars in charges that were never repaid, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig announced.
Mohammad Mushtaq, 56, of Valley Stream, New York, is charged with one count of conspiring to defraud financial institutions, five counts of bank fraud, one count of access device fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Mushtaq and his conspirators engaged in a scheme to use stolen and altered identities to obtain credit cards from financial institutions and then use those credit cards to make purchases that they had no intention to repay, leaving the financial institutions to bear the losses.
Mushtaq and his conspirators used the personal identifying information of people, including dates of birth, drivers’ license numbers, and Social Security numbers, to create “synthetic identities,” sometimes by pairing the name and Social Security number of actual persons with a fictitious birthdate, and sometimes by pairing the person’s Social Security number with a fictitious name and birthdate. They often used the name and Social Security number of a minor and altered the birthdate to make the identity appear to be that of an adult. Mushtaq altered the…
