Security News > 2022 > February > U.S. Authorities Charge 6 Indian Call Centers Scamming Thousands of Americans

A number of India-based call centers and their directors have been indicted for their alleged role in placing tens of millions of scam calls aimed at defrauding thousands of American consumers.

The indictment charged Manu Chawla, Sushil Sachdeva, Nitin Kumar Wadwani, Swarndeep Singh, Dinesh Manohar Sachdev, Gaje Singh Rathore, Sanket Modi, Rajiv Solanki and their respective call centers for conspiring with previously indicted VoIP provider E Sampark and its director, Guarav Gupta, to forward the calls to U.S. citizens.

"Criminal India-based call centers defraud U.S. residents, including the elderly, by misleading victims over the telephone utilizing scams such as Social Security and IRS impersonation as well as loan fraud," the U.S. Justice Department said in a release.

According to the November 2020 indictment issued against E Sampark and Gupta, the calls from India-based phone scammers led to reported losses of over $20 million from May 2015 to June 2020, with the company maintaining roughly 60 servers in the U.S. state of Florida for this purpose and which contained over 130,000 recordings of scam calls.

The scheme involved the callers posing as Internal Revenue Service employees to dupe the victims into transferring money, threatening them with arrest and fines should they fail to pay back taxes.

"These India-based call centers allegedly scared their victims and stole their money, including some victims' entire life savings."

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/02/us-authorities-charge-6-indian-call.html