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| Workers in a call center in India: in 2016 US authorities charged five such call centers with operating fraud schemes targetting South Asians living in the United States (AFP Photo/AFP) |
Washington (AFP) - Singapore has extradited an Indian national to the United States to face charges in a call center fraud that scammed millions of dollars from victims in the United States, the Justice Department announced Friday.
Hitesh
Madhubhai Patel, 42, of Ahmedabad, India, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday
in a Houston, Texas federal court for his role in a case that was first
announced in 2016, charging 60 people with wire fraud and money laundering
conspiracy.
Patel ran
the HGlobal call center, one of five India-based operations which allegedly
worked together in an operation which targeted mostly South Asians living in
the United States.
Callers
pretending to be US tax or immigration officials threatened them with arrest
and deportation if they did not remit money to the government.
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.
"This
extradition once again demonstrates the Department's unwavering commitment to
disrupt and dismantle the India-based call center scam industry and to work
with our foreign partners to hold accountable those who perpetrate schemes that
defraud our citizens," said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski
in a statement.
Justice
officials said that in the past six years more than 15,000 people have been
cheated of over $75 million in scams in which callers pose as agents of the
Internal Revenue Service, the federal tax agency.
So far, in
the Indian call center case, 24 domestic US defendants have been convicted and
sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, the Justice Department said.
"The
remaining India-based defendants have yet to be arraigned in this case,"
they said.
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