US dept charges 61 in India call centre scam

Washington, October 27 

The US Justice Department charged 61 persons and entities on Thursday with taking part in a scam involving India-based call centres where agents impersonated Internal Revenue Service, immigration and other federal officials and demanded payments for non-existent debts.

The scam, which going on since 2013, targeted at least 15,000 persons who lost more than $300 million. Twenty people were arrested in the US on Thursday, while 32 individuals and five call centres in India have been charged, the department said in a statement. The defendants, including 24 persons across nine US states, were indicted by a grand jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. 

US Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said the US would be seeking extradition of those based in India and warned others engaged in similar schemes. “It’s important for the scammers in India to know that the US is looking at this, is watching them and they could, if they engage in that activity, be extradited to the US and could sit in jail ... for several years,” she said. 

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The indictment alleges that the defendants were involved in a “sophisticated fraudulent scheme organised by conspirators in India, including a network of call centres in Ahmedabad”, the Department of Justice said.  It said the operators of the call centres in Ahmedabad “threatened potential victims with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation, if they did not pay taxes or penalties to the government.” Payments by victims were laundered by a US network of co-conspirators using prepaid debit cards or wire transfers, often using stolen or fake identities, the statement said. 

The call centre racket made use of informal money transfer businesses known as “hawalas” to move the money. Many of those businesses did not know the money being transferred was part of an extortion scheme, it said.  

The call centres also ran scams in which victims were offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee.

The investigation involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Treasury, Homeland Security, US Secret Service and police officials.

The Mumbai police had unearthed the scam after raiding seven call centres on Mira Road. The daily transactions of the call centres stood at around Rs 1.5 crore. — Agencies

Praise for Delhi

The US on Thursday commended India for helping it in unearthing a multi-million dollars transnational scam that cheated thousands of American citizens into paying fictitious debts. “We want to commend Indians for having done that because we think it’s important that they come in addition to our enforcement efforts, and now, we have do to the extradition process,” Assistant Attorney General Leslie R Caldwell. PTI