Man gets 6-plus years in prison for $200M credit card plot

A New York man has been sentenced in New Jersey to more than six years in prison for leading a $200 million credit card fraud scheme.

Fifty-six-year-old Tahir Lodhi, of Hicksville, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud. He was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Trenton to 80 months in prison.

Lodhi worked with a group of conspirators to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards. They then ran up more than $200 million in charges they never repaid.

Prosecutors say the ring created dozens of sham companies to obtain credit card terminals to ring up the charges while providing credit bureaus with false information to improve the credit histories of the fake identities to get larger credit limits.

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