Indian-origin former CEO Parmjit Parmar has been sentenced to five years in prison in connection with a massive $212 million fraud case in New Jersey.
Parmar, 55, also known as Paul Parmer, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $125 million. He had pleaded guilty in 2025.
According to court documents, the fraud took place between May 2015 and September 2017.
Parmar and his co-conspirators, including Sotirios Zaharis, also known as Sam Zaharis, and Ravi Chivukula, allegedly carried out an elaborate scheme to defraud a private investment firm and others.
The case was linked to the funding of a transaction to take a healthcare services company, which was publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market, private.
To fund the transaction, the private investment firm contributed around $82.5 million, while a consortium of financial institutions provided another $130 million. The total funding stood at approximately $212.5 million.
According to prosecutors, Parmar and the others used fraudulent methods to grossly inflate the company’s value and misled investors into believing that it was worth far more than its actual value.
They also sought to raise tens of millions of dollars from public markets, claiming that the funds would be used for the company’s acquisition of various operating subsidiaries.
However, court documents said that several of those entities either did not exist or had only a fraction of the operating income claimed by the conspirators.
The accused allegedly routed proceeds from the secondary offerings through bank accounts they controlled and used the money for purposes unrelated to the proposed acquisitions.
To cover up the fraud, they allegedly created fake customers and altered bank statements to make it appear as though the money was coming from legitimate business revenue.
Court documents further stated that Parmar and his co-conspirators falsified and fabricated bank records of subsidiary entities to create a false picture of the company’s revenue streams. They also made material misrepresentations and omissions to the private investment firm and others.
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Their actions caused victims to value the company at more than $300 million while financing the transaction to take it private.
The scheme came to light in September 2017, when Parmar and his co-conspirators either resigned from their positions or were terminated.
On March 16, 2018, the company and several affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy, attributing their financial collapse largely to the fraud scheme.
