TRENTON, NJ (TIP): An Indian origin New Jersey jewelry storeowner who used his business to further one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the Justice Department was sentenced November 30 to 24 months in prison, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Vinod Dadlani, 53, of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson to information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Judge Thompson imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court: Dadlani was indicted in October 2013 as part of a conspiracy – led by Tahir Lodhi, Babar Qureshi, Ijaz Butt, and others – to fabricate more than 7,000 false identities to obtain tens of thousands of credit cards. Since then, 19 people, including Dadlani, have pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme.

The scheme involved a three-step process in which the defendants would make up a false identity by creating fraudulent identification documents and a phony credit profile with the major credit bureaus; pump up the credit of the false identity by providing bogus information about that identity’s creditworthiness; then borrowed or spent as much as they could without repaying the debts – causing more than $200 million in confirmed losses to businesses and financial institutions.

Many of these debts were incurred at Dadlani’s Jersey City, New Jersey, jewelry store, among many other locations. During his guilty plea proceeding, Dadlani admitted he worked with other conspirators who came to his store and allowed them to swipe cards he knew did not legitimately belong to them. Dadlani would then split the proceeds of the phony transactions with the conspirators.

The scope of the criminal fraud enterprise required Dadlani’s conspirators to construct an elaborate network of false identities. Across the country, the conspirators maintained more than 1,800 “drop addresses,” including houses, apartments and post office boxes, which they used as the mailing addresses for the false identities.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Thompson sentenced Dadlani to two years of supervised release and ordered him to pay forfeiture of $411,000.