Yahoo – AFP, Paul Handley, October 27, 2016
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| US Justice Department arrested 20 people in connection with Indian call centers that cheated American of hundreds of millions of dollars (AFP Photo/Ali al-Saadi) |
Washington
(AFP) - 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.
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