A man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for defrauding people of $1.2 million with a banking tech help scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois.
Kartik Saini, 33, was handed a sentence of six years and a month in federal prison by U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey on June 25, according to the office.
In 2020 and 2021, he and others acted as employees of Google, Apple, Citibank and other companies to tell victims their accounts or computers had been hacked, prosecutors said. They then told the victims they needed to wire money in the form of gift cards or cryptocurrency to the companies for safekeeping.
In total, they took $1.2 million from four victims, including $746,000 from a Chicago woman, which prosecutors said made up “a large portion of her retirement savings.”
Saini was arrested in New York in August 2024 when he arrived on a flight from India. He pleaded guilty in March to a charge of wire fraud.
