MIAMI, United States (CMC) — The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) says the owner and operator of a Florida-based telecommunications company has pleaded guilty and a West Palm Beach, Florida, resident has been sentenced to 52 months in prison in connection with a sophisticated global cellphone fraud scheme linked to the Caribbean.

The DOJ said that the scheme involved compromising cellphone customers’ accounts and “cloning” their phones to make fraudulent international calls to Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and other Caribbean countries “with high calling rates”.

Ramon Batista, 49, pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, access device fraud, the use, production or possession of modified telecommunications instruments, and the use or possession of hardware or software configured to obtain telecommunications services, the DOJ said.

Batista also pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.

The DOJ said sentencing for Batista will be scheduled for a later date before Senior USD District Judge Daniel TK Hurley who has sentenced Jose Santana, also known as Octavio Perez, 53, to more than four years in jail on similar charges. Santana pleaded guilty on October 26, 2016.

According to the plea agreements, Batista, Santana and their co-conspirators participated in a scheme to steal access to and fraudulently open new cellphone accounts using the personal information of individuals around the United States.

Batista, Santana and others also operated “call sites” in South Florida and elsewhere, “where they would receive telecommunications identifying information associated with customers’ accounts from their co-conspirators and use that data, as well as other software and hardware, to reprogramme cellphones that they controlled,” the plea agreement states.

Batista admitted that his role in the scheme included selling fraudulent telecommunications services through his company, Arymyx, Inc; operating a “call site” with reprogrammed cellphones through which he routed international phone calls as part of the fraud scheme; and using and providing other co-conspirators with stolen or compromised telecommunications identifying information that was then be employed to reprogramme cellphones.

The DOJ said Batista and Santana also admitted that they were personally responsible for, respectively, more than US$794,000 and US$170,000 in loss resulting from the scheme.

The DOJ said Batista is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the case, and Santana is the second to be sentenced.

Edwin Fana and Farintong Calderon previously pleaded guilty to similar charges in this matter.

Fana was sentenced on December 22, last year to 48 months in prison, and Calderon is scheduled to be sentenced on February 21, 2017.