FILE – An Uber sign is displayed inside a car in Palatine, Ill., Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Citing record-high prices for gasoline, Uber is charging customers a new fuel fee to help offset costs for ride-hail and delivery drivers. The company announced Friday, March 11, 2022, that the temporary surcharge will be either 45 cents or 55 cents for each Uber trip and either 35 cents or 45 cents for each Uber Eats order, depending on location.
A Revere, Massachusetts, man was sentenced Monday for defrauding rideshare companies using fraudulent driver accounts he created using stolen identities.
Thiago De Souza Prado, 39, was sentenced to 70 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Rhode Island said. The judge also imposed a $50,000 fine.
Prado was charged in May of 2021 along with 17 other people, and convicted by a federal jury in September on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft.
According to prosecutors, starting in 2019, Prado obtained stolen Massachusetts driver's licenses and bought social security numbers on the darknet. He and his co-conspirators then used those stolen identities to pass the criminal background checks, sex offender registry checks and the driving record check required by rideshare companies and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. They used the stolen identities to establish more than 50 fraudulent driver accounts at Uber and Lyft.
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They also used the stolen social security numbers for tax reporting on their fraudulent accounts, prosecutors said. Once the driving accounts were active, Prado would either use the accounts himself or rent them out to others who also could not pass the background checks, often because they didn't have social security numbers and were in the country illegally.
Prosecutors said he also used his fake driver accounts to get bonuses from rideshare companies by referring his other fake driver accounts as new drivers. He and his co-conspirators also used an app to spoof rides and ride lengths so they were paid by the rideshare companies for rides that were longer and more expensive than those they actually provided. He received payments via bank accounts he opened in the names of identity theft victims.
“What Thiago De Souza Prado and this crew did is truly egregious," Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in a statement. "They stole the identities of unsuspecting consumers, violated customers’ privacy, and potentially compromised public safety by putting unqualified drivers behind the wheel of these rideshare and food delivery services which millions of people rely on."
She thanked Uber's Global Security and Investigations team for thei efforts in rooting out the fraud ring and bringing it to the FBI's attention.
The status of the cases against Prado's co-conspirators was not immediately known.
