INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The criminal charges were filed by the US Attorney's Office in Chicago (Representational)Washington: Two
Indian-Americans, owners of a bulk-mailing company in suburban Chicago, were today charged with swindling the US Postal Service of at least
$16 million.Owner and operator of Prodigy Mailing Services, Yogesh Patel and Arvind Lakkamsani, defrauded USPS by forging documents and
secretly using an official date stamp to fraudulently authenticate payment of postage for than 80 million pieces of mail, according to
criminal charges filed by the US Attorney's Office in Chicago.According to the charges, Mr Patel and Mr Lakkamsani schemed with a third
defendant, David Gargano, to fraudulently cause the USPS to deliver numerous bulk mailings without payment.The trio forged a USPS clerk's
signature on the verification forms and secretly used an official postal service date stamp to make it falsely appear that the clerk had
authenticated postage, the charges allege.From 2010 to 2015, the defendants caused a loss to the postal service of at least $16 million,
according to the charges.Each of the three defendants - Mr Patel, 58, of Orlando, Florida, Mr Lakkamsani, 57, of Northbrook, Illinois and Mr
Gargano, 51, of Barrington, Illinois - have been charged with one count of mail fraud
Arraignments in the US District Court in Chicago have not yet been scheduled, a media release said.According to the charges, Mr
Gargano-owned and Illinois-based Direct Mail Resources Inc, which collected a fee to match customers seeking to make bulk mailings with
companies who could perform those services, such as Prodigy
Mr Gargano referred two energy companies to Prodigy for bulk mailing services.The two energy companies provided millions of dollars to the
defendants to pay the postage for the companies' bulk mailings
Instead of using those funds to pay the postage, the defendants split the money among themselves and used it for their own benefit, the
charges allege.Federal prosecutors alleged that the defendants made the mailings but kept the postage money from the energy companies
without paying postage to the postal service.Mr Patel and Mr Lakkamsani fraudulently maintained a key to a postal service mail unit, which
was located inside Prodigy's facility, and used the key to secretly access an official date-stamp without the USPS' knowledge or approval,
the release said.By forging the postal clerk's signature and fraudulently stamping the mailings, the two Indian-Americans made it falsely
appear that the verification forms - which identified the amount of postage paid for the bulk mailings - were authentic and that postage had
been appropriately paid, federal prosecutors alleged.
