Slashdot Mirror
Fake Call Centers in India Scam Americans Of Millions (ap.org)
An anonymous reader writes:Indian police have arrested 70 people and are questioning hundreds more after uncovering a massive scam to cheat thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars by posing as U.S. tax authorities and demanding unpaid taxes, a police officer said Thursday. According to police in Mumbai, the yearlong scam involved running fake call centers which sent voice mail messages telling U.S. nationals to call back because they owed back taxes. Those who called back and believed the threats would fork out thousands of dollars to "settle" their case, Mumbai police officer Parag Marere said Thursday. The scam brought in more than $150,000 a day, Marere said without giving a total sum. If the scam netted that amount daily, it would have made almost $55 million in one year. Some victims were also told to buy gift vouchers from various companies, and hand over the voucher ID numbers which the impostors then used to make purchases, Marere said. Police said they are likely to file charges against many of the 600 or more people still being questioned on suspicion of running the fake call centers, housed on several stories of a Mumbai office building.
Oh stop it. I've dealt with the IRS on numerous occasions. They have inevitably been polite, professional and they at least attempt to be helpful. Yes, they're the IRS. Yes, it's the Evil Big Guberment. But how the hell are you supposed to run a civilization without taxes and how are you supposed to collect taxes without something like the IRS?
Don't rush the answer. Think this through carefully. Please do NOT pick up that copy of 'Atlas Shrugged'.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Try to imagine yourself as a 75 year old person, and think about the changes in payments that you have seen. A 75 year old person would have seen the introduction of credit cards. The idea of paying by by cellphone would have seemed absurd only a couple of decades ago. Even the idea of paying over the phone, using a credit card would have seemed absurd earlier in hypothetical 75 year-old person's life.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My first attempt to write this got submitted before I was finished writing it.
I haven't made a ton of money, and I'm now 40, with a two-year-old daughter. That worries me - how am I going to be able to pay for everything I need when I'm old and possibly sick? I may not be able to keep working forever, and from ages 65-90 is 25 years of expenses I'll need to cover. The voters have decided to let social security go bankrupt rather than making some small changes while there's still time, so I can't rely on social security. Who knows what my daughter my need - just braces if I'm lucky, something MUCH more expensive if I'm not. So I'm living very frugally and saving as much as I can. I go home and make spaghetti while my friends go out to eat.
Since I do have a slight clue, I don't put the money I'm saving under my mattress, I put it in a mutual fund, where it will grow. That means I own a tiny bit of many large companies - Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, BOA, etc. When P&G makes money selling cereal or AT&T makes money providing phone service, my savings makes a little bit of money. I pray that I can save enough, and earn enough from those savings, to be able to pay my electric bill when I'm 80.
For some reason, which you may or may not understand, about 25% of Slashdot commenters think it's perfectly okay to steal from those of us who save. Stealing from AT&T, or P&G, or BOA is fine, they say, those are big companies. Those greedy capitalist stockholders who save for retirement don't need their money! It's fine for me to take it, Ray won't actually need his money that he's been saving. If you can understand that thinking, I bet the Indian scammers think much the same way. Personally, I can't understand it at all, but then again maybe that's because I'm simply not a crook.
Another 30% of Slashdot think taking our savings is a great idea, we should pass a law saying anyone who saved has to give their money to people who chose to buy a new smartphone instead of saving. I'm not sure how that reasoning works either. You blow $650 on a new iPhone, to replace the perfectly good iPhone you already have. I keep my cheap Walmart phone and save my money for when my daughter needs something. Therefore you, with the help of federal agents brandishing guns, should take my money that I saved so you can blow it on some more stupid crap? I don't understand that at all, other than I understand that selfishness and self-centeredness exists, and it seems many of these people are horribly, horribly spoiled. They're in the top 3% wealthiest people in the world, and whine that sometimes they don't have quite enough bandwidth to run their both of their two 4K TVs at full resolution, unless they pay the $10 upgrade (meaning they'd have to actually work for a few minutes).