Shreyas Baldevbhai Chaudhary, 25, of Gandhinagar, India, pleaded guilty last week in U.S. District Court in Cleveland to one count of money laundering conspiracy for a financial scam involving older adults across the United States, including a 77-year-old Salem man.

Chaudhary is one of three people convicted in the scheme, which resulted in six victims losing almost $5 million. The scheme involved multiple scams, convincing victims to turn over large amounts of money to the scammers, though the specifics of each scam were not provided.

The Salem victim responded to a pop-up ad on his computer, which froze the computer and instructed him to contact Microsoft Security with a scam phone number. The scheme unfolded from there.

The Salem man lost at least $61,000, according to an Aug. 8 affidavit filed in the case. The scheme operated from December 2022 to December 2023, according to the Chaudhary criminal complaint.

An 82-year-old New York City man handed over more than $3 million to one of the scammers, Yash Nitinkumar Raval, of Erie, Pa., who convinced the victim he was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the affidavit states.

Raval and the third co-defendant, Trusha Chaudhary, who is not related to Shreyas Chaudhary, pleaded guilty earlier to the same offense as Shreyas Chaudhary.

U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio J. Philip Calabrese sentenced Raval on Dec. 19 to 41 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release after he leaves prison. He is also ordered to pay restitution of $224,902, jointly and severally with the other defendants. Raval’s passport was “returned” to Immigration and Custom Enforcement on Feb. 3, 2026, according to court documents.

Calabrese will sentence Trusha Chaudhary at 1 p.m. Aug. 6. Shreyas Chaudhary could get as much as 20 years in prison when Calabrese sentences him at 1 p.m. Aug. 13.

The 16-page Aug. 8 affidavit details the scheme, which preyed on elderly people, including the Salem man, whose wife had passed away several months before the scheme began.

FBI agent Matt Richter of the Cleveland Division Headquarters Financial Crimes Squad stated in the affidavit that the Salem victim’s wife died in August 2023. In October 2023, the victim, identified as J.B., clicked on a pop-up ad and his computer froze with a message to contact Microsoft Security on a phone number provided.

J.B. called the number and spoke to someone who claimed to work for Microsoft using the name Howard. J.B. was put in contact with a woman named Stacy Brown, who pretended to work for J.B.’s bank. She told J.B. he was the victim of identity theft and needed to send Brown $11,000 worth of gift cards, which J.B. did over a period of two days, texting photos of the gift cards to the woman.

Brown then told J.B. to withdraw about $61,000 and follow her instructions to package the cash in a box, text her photos of the cash and the box, and wait for a vehicle to come to his house and collect the box.

On Oct. 23, 2023, when a black SUV pulled up, J.B. put the money in the back of the vehicle, and the vehicle left. On Oct. 25, Brown told J.B. to withdraw $50,000 from his bank, so he went to his bank to get it, but the bank suspected possible fraud and elder abuse and contacted the FBI, which contacted J.B. and learned the details. The FBI then obtained $50,000 in “controlled funds” and waited for a driver to come get it Nov. 2.

But on Nov. 2, the driver did not make contact with J.B. Instead, she said another driver would come Nov. 7. On Nov. 7, with the FBI present, J.B. spoke on the phone with a person using the fake name Frankie, using the same phone number as Brown, saying he was Brown’s supervisor. That day, a blue Hyundai Elantra with a Pennsylvania license plate parked in front of J.B.’s home, and J.B. put the money in the vehicle as instructed.

As the vehicle left J.B.’s home, members of the Columbiana County Sheriff’s Office pulled over the vehicle and arrested the driver, Yash Nitinkumar Raval of Erie, Pa. The FBI interviewed him, and he said a man using the alias of Al Capone instructed Raval to pick up the package from J.B.

The FBI was able to obtain information about the account associated with the encrypted messaging service associated with Al Capone.

The affidavit details the scope of the scam, including the steps taken by the scammers to steal large amounts of money from an 81-year-old Westlake Village, Calif., woman, in which she took steps to buy $89,000 worth of gold and also gave other amounts totaling $277,000.

It discussed how a 75-year-old man from Washington, D.C., fell for a similar scam and gave $709,000 worth of gold to “couriers” beginning around September 2023. The victim was also in possession of another $99,000 worth of gold he intended to provide to another courier, the affidavit states.

Raval’s phone contained a note and photos connecting Raval to the Washington, D.C., scam, the affidavit states. His phone also contained information connecting Raval to the New York City scam involving an 82-year-old victim whose attorney said his client “fell victim to a fraudulent scene that was similar to the schemes that defrauded” the Salem man and two others from July to November 2023. The New York victim provided $3.1 million of gold to phony couriers who came to his house, the affidavit states.

FBI agents found receipts in Raval’s vehicle showing that Raval was in the New York City area in late October 2023 around the time the New York City victim was scammed.

Raval’s phone led FBI agents to discover other victims, a 78-year-old man of Owings, Maryland, and a 74-year-old resident of Heuvelton, New York. The affidavit stated that both of those victims “were actively being scammed when contacted by the FBI and would likely have lost more money had they not been notified they were a victim of a scam.” The first victim lost about $400,000, and the second victim lost about $232,000, the document states.

The affidavit states that Trusha Chaudhary was involved in a scam involving a 75-year-old Canon City, Colorado, victim. In that episode, the man was contacted by a person who convinced him that his identity was compromised and convinced him to send $11,000 to “Olivia Martin” at a UPS access point in Riverdale, Illinois. When Trusha Chahdhary tried to pick up the package, she used a California driver’s license, and the Riverdale Police Department identified the license as fraudulent and contacted Homeland Security Investigations, the affidavit states.

Trusha Chaudhary told Homeland Security investigators she met Shreyas Chaudhary in India before she relocated to the United States in 2019. She primarily communicated with him through a messaging account that used the name Al Capone.

She told investigators Shreyas Chaudhary had her send him a passport photo of herself, and she received 14 fraudulent California driver’s licenses with her photo on them in different names, including Olivia Martin, and told her to use them when picking up packages for him.

She later identified Shreyas Chaudhary out of a photo lineup as the individual she met in India and who had directed her to pick up packages in the United States for him.

On the day Raval picked up a package from the Salem man and was interviewed by the FBI, he agreed to call a phone number identified by the name Al Capone, the affidavit states. On April 5, 2025, Homeland Security played the recording of the conversation for Trusha Chaudhary, and she identified the voice as being that of Shreyas Chaudhary.