Yesterday, federal officials announced that they have destroyed a call center fraud carried out in India and the US. Pretending to be officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Internal Revenue Service, the perpetrators conned Americans, most of whom were immigrants, out of thousands of dollars.
Five call centers in Ahmedabad, India, and 56 people in India and the US and were named in the 81-page indictment as being allegedly involved in the scam. They were charged in a federal district court in Houston, Texas, with crimes including identity theft, wire fraud, money laundering, and impersonating a US officer. Federal agents arrested 20 people in Alabama, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Indiana.
Indian callers telephoned people in the US, demanding payments to avoid arrest or to clear supposedly unpaid taxes. The indictment alleges that the funds of victims were collected by co-conspirators in the US, who laundered the money and transferred it to India. The scheme often targeted immigrants or elderly people with good credit scores, investigators claim. Immigrants were often threatened with deportation if they did not pay.
Over 15,000 people paid more than $250 million to the swindlers. The bust was the result of a three-year investigation conducted by the Inspector General for Tax Administration, the US Treasury, the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Homeland Security Investigations department of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.