$ 14M taken in call center plots
NEW » Police in New Delhi say they have arrested more than 50 people over a call center scheme that lured victims into thinking their assets were being frozen as part of an elaborate drug investigation and would then transfer money to avoid going to jail.
According to authorities, scammers in the plot would telephone people and tell them that their assets and bank accounts were being seized after officers from U. S. law enforcement agencies found their bank account details at crime scenes involving drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia.
More than 4,500 Americans fell for it, New Delhi police said Wednesday, and officials estimate that more than $ 14 million was transferred over two years.
Investigators said the victims would be given a choice: Either face arrest or choose an “alternative dispute resolution” option that would allow them to avoid facing the law.
“They were asked to buy Bitcoins or Google gift cards worth all the money in their accounts,” said Anyesh Roy, a police officer in New Delhi. The money was then transferred to what the victims were told was “a safe government wallet” but that actually belonged to the scammers.
Call centers are part of
India’s expansive outsourcing industry, which generates about $ 28 billion in annual revenue and employs 1.2 million people. At the same time, the country has emerged as a hot spot for online fraud in which perpetrators rarely are punished.
Cases have become so common in recent years that Indian authorities have dedicated special units to dealing with the problem.
In August, police in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon raided a call center and arrested more than two dozen people suspected of being involved in cheating more than 30,000 Americans by positing malware onto their computers and then offering to fix them for a price.
The call center employees sent countless links to pornographic websites to people across the United States, police said. When the links were clicked, the users’ computer systems would be bugged. The scammers would then direct the users to buy iTunes gift cards or charge them up to $ 700 each to debug the computers, according to police.
Authorities have carried out raids across India and arrested hundreds of people, from boiler rooms in New Delhi, a hub of the global call center industry, to the suburbs of Mumbai, where scammers impersonating IRS officials have demanded payments to cover back taxes.