US charges dozens in India-based call center fraud racket

WASHINGTON: US justice authorities announced action Thursday to shut down a group of Indian call centers that had cheated victims in the United States of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Justice Department said tens of thousands of victims, most of them from South Asia, were extorted by callers pretending to be US tax or immigration officials threatening them with arrest and deportation if they did not remit money to the government.

But the victims were then directed to people working with the call centers in the United States to collect the "fines" through prepaid debit cards or wire transfers, and the money was quickly laundered out of the country, according to the Justice Department.



The agency said it had arrested 20 people and unveiled charges against five call centers and 32 individuals in India in the Ahmedabad-based operation.

The US attorney in the southern district of Texas set charges against a total of 56 people and five Indian companies for conspiracy to commit identity theft, false personation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud and money laundering.

The department will seek the extradition of those in India charged in the case.

"These individuals demanded immediate payments from the people they called to avoid deportation, to avoid arrest or to cover supposedly unpaid income taxes," said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.



"In the process, these criminals took hundreds of millions of dollars from this scam alone. The victims include people all over the United States... and targeted primarily immigrants and the elderly."

The call center 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, according to the Justice Department.

Caldwell said the five call centers and individuals targeted were apart from the arrests early this month of some 70 people by Indian authorities also involved in call center scams.

"We want to commend the Indians for having done that because we think it's important that they come in, in addition to our enforcement efforts," said Caldwell.

The indictment names the call centers involved as HGlobal, Call Mantra, Worldwide Solution, Zoriion Communications and Sharma BPO Services.



Caldwell said the call centers worked together on the scam but did not identify any one individual or group leading the scheme.

She said it was unlikely any of the victims, most of them cheated between 2012 and 2015, would get their money back.

"Often once the money's paid, its gone," she said.

Caldwell warned that the arrests do not mean the end to such scams.

"These people are persistent. If you get phone calls, and I do expect these people are resilient and will not give up, my advice to you is just hang up," she said.