On January 22, 2020, in the Northern District of Georgia, Rodrigo Leon-Castillo was sentenced for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. According to court documents, Leon-Castillo engaged in a scheme involving extorting money from victims in the United States by often times purporting to be agents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who threatened to arrest victims who did not pay alleged tax debts. Leon-Castillo and his coconspirators were indicted for the offense in September 2018, which Leon-Castillo pled guilty to the offense in September 2019.

From about August 2013 through May 2018, Leon-Castillo and the codefendants operated call centers primarily in and around Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, and used multiple IRS impersonation call scripts and payday loan scripts outlining what to say to each victim that they contacted. The coconspirators instructed victims to go to banks or automated teller machines to withdraw money, use the money to purchase prepaid sored value cards from retail stores, and then provide the unique serial number of the prepaid stored value cards to purported government officials.

Leon-Castillo and the coconspirators directed victims to wire scammed funds to money services, such as MoneyGram or Western Union , to the attention of fictitious names and U.S. based defendants and their coconspirators. They then retrieved the money, sometimes using false identification in the fictitious names, and they subsequently deposited the victim-scammed funds into United States bank accounts of individuals and businesses.

Leon-Castillo was sentenced to 51 months' imprisonment and three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay $833,938.20 in restitution and a $200 special assessment.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: N.D. Ga. Indict. filed Sept. 4, 2018; N.D. Ga. Plea Agreement filed Sept. 17, 2019; and N.D. Ga. Judgment filed Jan. 23, 2020.