Gajera Prashant and Dharaben Bhavadiya, an Indian man and a woman, pleaded guilty to a PayPal refund scam in Arkansas. They have received five-year suspended sentences which means they do not have to go to jail immediately despite their serious crime. The PayPal refund scam involves a scammer convincing the victim that they got money accidentally sent to their PayPal account, which had to be refunded.An undercover operation busted Prashant and Bhavadiya in April when Gentry cops were informed that two people were coming to a Liquor store to extract a $29,500 payment. An undercover police officer posed as an elderly person with a box of fake money. The Highfill Police Department also deployed drones to assist in the sting operation. The undercover cop gave Prashant fake US currency
What Prashant and Bhavadiya said
After they were arrested, Prashant told the police that Bhavadiya had asked him to assist her in picking up the money. He said Bavadiya was set to receive $300 for picking up the money, and he knew the box contained “approximately $30,000″.Bhavadiya, on the other hand, told police that she had only arrived in the US in the past few weeks and said her family in India was in danger. She said she did not know Prashant and was asked to meet him to pull off the scam. She told the investigators that she was in the US for her clothing business.Investigators believed that both of them were just middlemen and that they were participating in the scam for money. They had foul cellphones with them and multiple additional SIM cards.“These scammers are professionals,” Gentry Police detective Ryan Loftus said. “They know what to say, they know how to say it, they know when to say it. So you do believe them.”
