U.S. arrests 20 in call centre racket

The U.S. on Thursday arrested 20 people, at least 16 of them of Indian origin, on charges of defrauding hundreds of Americans through a scheme operated from a network of call centres in Ahmedabad. Five companies and 32 individuals in India have also been charged.

The names of the companies or the individuals were not immediately known. The case comes close on the heels of a similar racket, which was busted by the Thane police earlier this month. The racket involved impersonating U.S tax officials and threatening U.S.-based victims to shell out money.

In some cases, victims were lured into paying up ‘processing fees’ for financing schemes that never materialised.

According to a release by the U.S Justice Department, the arrests were made on Thursday morning, following a three-year investigation.

The indictment said, “One of the call centres extorted $12,300 from an 85-year-old victim from San Diego, California, after threatening her with arrest if she did not pay fictitious tax violations. On the same day that she was extorted, one of the U.S.-based defendants allegedly used a reloadable debit card funded with the victim’s money to purchase money orders in Frisco, Texas.”

The indictment also alleges that the defendants “extorted $136,000 from a victim in Hayward, California, who they called multiple times over a period of 20 days, fraudulently purporting to be IRS agents and demanding payment for alleged tax violations.

The victim was then directed to purchase 276 stored value cards which the defendants then transferred to reloadable debit cards. Some of the victim’s money ended up on cards which were activated using stolen personal identifying information from U.S.-based victims,” the Justice Department said.