A Peruvian national was sentenced yesterday to 98 months in prison and to pay nearly $700,000 in restitution to his more than 1,100 victims for his role in overseeing a transnational fraud conspiracy that targeted recent immigrants to the United States.
According to court documents, Jose Alejandro Zuñiga Cano, 40, of Lima, was the operator of a Peruvian call centre that defrauded and extorted Spanish-speaking United States residents by falsely threatening them with arrest, court proceedings and immigration consequences.
Zuñiga was extradited from Peru in March to face charges related to the scheme and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in July.
In pleading guilty, Zuñiga admitted that he owned and operated a call centre in Lima that placed unsolicited calls to Spanish-speaking consumers in the United States and falsely claimed that they had won or qualified for free products, including computer tablets and English language courses.
On later calls, Zuñiga and his co-conspirators falsely claimed that victims were contractually obligated to pay large sums to receive the products.
Zuñiga and his co-conspirators impersonated lawyers, court officials, police officers and representatives of a supposed “minor crimes court” to intimidate victims and force them to send payments. Zuñiga and his co-conspirators queried potential victims about their country of origin and threatened victims with court proceedings, arrest and immigration consequences if they did not pay.
Many victims who made payments following these lies and threats were frequently re-victimized by Zuñiga and his co-conspirators with a related restitution scheme. The defendant and his co-conspirators placed additional calls to victims who had already paid and, while posing as lawyers for a U.S. court, falsely represented that victims were entitled to restitution payments and would receive their money back if they paid additional fees.
In reality, there was no lawyer, no restitution order and no funds returned to the victims who made those additional payments. Instead, Zuñiga kept those additional victim payments for himself.
With the sentencing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 12 defendants have now been convicted and sentenced in connection with a $15 million transnational fraud scheme that defrauded and threatened Spanish-speaking U.S. consumers, claiming they would suffer legal consequences if they did not pay for English-language learning products they never requested.
Collectively, the scheme was responsible for defrauding more than 30,000 Spanish-speaking residents of the United States. Many of the victims were recent immigrants who had merely expressed interest in learning English.
The 12 defendants include eight Peruvian call centre owner-operators and four distribution centre owner-operators who processed payments, distributed products and facilitated the fraud in the United States. Many of the defendants shared strategies on how to defraud Spanish-speaking residents of the United States.
Zuñiga is the eighth defendant to be extradited from Peru and plead guilty in federal court to fraud charges related to Peruvian call centres involved in the English language learning scam.
In 2021 and 2022, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr., sentenced Henrry Milla, Carlos Espinoza, Jerson Renteria, Fernan Huerta, Omar Cuzcano, Evelyng Milla and Josmell Espinoza to sentences ranging from 88 months to 110 months in prison.
