An Eastern European band of online scammers has been indicted on charges they ran a multimillion cyber scheme that bilked American customers with enticing offers of cars, motorcycles, and boats on sites like eBay and Cars.com, authorities said Thursday.
Romanian fugitive Nicolae Popescu plus five other Romanians and an Albanian would email with gullible buyers about the fake vehicles and convince the buyers to pay the price – usually $10,000 to $45,000, according to federal prosecutors.
The buyers would then deposit the money into US bank accounts the scammers allegedly opened using forged passports, according to an indictment filed in Brooklyn federal court.
Six other scammers were arrested last year but Popescu and five others remain in the wind.
“They siphoned funds from victims to fuel their greedy desires and created false identities, fake websites and counterfeit certificates of title in order to make the scheme more convincing,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos.
Prosecutors estimate the scammers made over $3 million.