They were identified as Narendra Kumar Rastogi, 47, Anil Anand, 39, Manoj Nijhawan, 43, and Udhay Shankar, 27, all residents of New Jersey. If convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud, each could face a maximum of five years in prison and fined more than $250,000.

According to prosecutors, they claimed their companies were brokers to non-ferrous metal suppliers and buyers and they arranged financing for purchases involving parties in India, Hong Kong, Singapore and UAE.

The defendants, arrested yesterday, raised "deceit and misrepresentation to an art form," said acting agent incharge of the Federal Bureau Investigation Jim Sheehan. He likened the alleged fraud to "breaking into bank vaults and hauling off bags of cash."

Investigators charged that the four carried out the scam since at least May 2000 through a group of companies in Piscataway in New Jersey and in London. The companies involved included Allied Deals Inc., Hampton Lane Inc and Sai Commodity Inc.

US Attorney James B. Comey said the scam was unearthed when an alert employee of the J P Morgan Chase Bank decided to walk to the office of a company called Island Metals which had received $1.2 million of the bank's money. What the employee found was a "nondescript Manhattan office building, a door with a peephole in it and a teeny little sign that said Island Metals," he said.

Prosecutors allege that the defendants were falsely conveying to banks that they were investing money to pay metal suppliers when they were actually wiring loans they got to their own banks accounts.

They said the companies generally provided the banks with security interest in the assets but the four allegedly began fabricating collateral and misrepresenting business deals as a part of scheme to steal million of dollars.

- nriol.com report

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