Millions of dollars were generated in an Indian fraud scheme via annoying pop up ads
Three men were sentenced to prison on February 17, 2026 accused of running a Indian scam regarding fake ads on personal computers. The suspects involved people from India and the United States. The suspects are Nachiket Banwari, 36, Hunter Mello, 42, and Richard Nolan, 60. The fraud was in Charlotte, NC and throughout the USA, the call centers were in India.
Nachiket lived in Charlotte. Hunter lived in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Richard lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The suspects and others were part of a conspiracy that carried out an international internet technical support fraud scam targeting victims, many of whom were elderly in the United States and elsewhere.
The malicious pop-ups suddenly appeared on victims’ screens and froze their computers. The pop-ups contained misrepresentations designed to trick the victims into believing their computers had been infected with a virus and needed technical support to fix the problem.
The pop-ups instructed victims to call the number in the pop ups to receive technical support. The numbers connected the victims to various Republic of India-based call centers who misrepresented themselves as Microsoft.
The scammers induced the victims to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for technical support to fix the non existent computer problems. No technical support was actually provided.
The scheme tricked millions of U.S.-based computer users into calling the call centers. Banwari worked for Capstone Technologies, a company headquartered in Charlotte.
The malicious pop-ups brought in $7 million. Banwari received three percent of the revenue at $222,334. Mello was a broker of pop-up call leads to call centers in the Republic of India. Mello generated over $20 million in sales of pop-ups to call centers.
Nolan participated in the tech support scheme by creating and operating a platform called TrackDrive to route technical support fraud calls to the call centers. An investigation led to the suspects getting arrested for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
In 2026 Nachiket was sentenced to 30 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Mello was ordered to serve 40 months in prison. Nolan was sentenced to 24 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
The Court ordered the defendants to collectively forfeit $3,711,000 in proceeds from the scheme.
