Man gets 4 yrs for role in credit card scam

TRENTON,NJ — An Iselin man will serve nearly four years in prison for his part in a $200 million credit-card scam, one of the largest-ever investigated by the US Department of Justice.

Babar Qureshi, 63, was sentenced to 46 months after previously pleading guilty to the bank fraud.

Qureshi was one of several suspects charged in February 2013 in a conspiracy to create more than 7,000 fake identities, which were then used to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards.

The scammers created false documents and credit profiles and inflated the creditworthiness of those identities before running up huge loans.

Habib Chaudhry was one of 18 people first charged by the FBI in February, 2013 in connection with what prosecutors said was one of their largest credit card fraud cases ever.

Scammers across the country helped maintain 1,800 mailing addresses used in conjunction with the fraudulently obtained cards. Qureshi’s role was to run up charges at merchants on the scam, who would pay Qureshi a portion of the charge in cash.

Qureshi then used phony bank accounts to cover his tracks, spending the cash on personal expenses, including his mortgage.