Feds Charge 61 People In Indian-Based IRS Phone Scam Case (consumerist.com)

BUL2294 writes: Following the arrests earlier this month in India of call center employees posing as IRS or immigration agents, USA Today and Consumerist are reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has charged 61 people in the U.S. and India of facilitating the scam, bilking millions from Americans thinking they were facing immediate arrest and prosecution. "According to the indictment (PDF) -- which covers 20 individuals in the U.S. and 32 people and five call centers in India -- since about 2012 the defendants used information obtained from data brokers and other sources to call potential victims impersonating officers from the IRS or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services," reports Consumerist. The report adds: "To give the calls an air of authenticity, the organization was able to 'spoof' phone numbers, making the calls appear to have really come from a federal agency. The callers would then allegedly threaten potential victims with arrest, imprisonment, fines, or deportation if they did not pay supposed taxes or penalties to the government. In instances when the victims agreed to pay, the DOJ claims that the call centers would instruct them to go to banks or ATMs to withdraw money, use the funds to purchase prepaid stored value cards from retail stores, and then provide the unique serial number to the caller. At this point, the operations U.S.-based counterparts would use the serial numbers to transfer the funds to prepaid reloadable cards. The cards would then be used to purchase money orders that were transferred into U.S. bank accounts of individuals or businesses. To make matters worse, the indictment claims that the prepaid debit cards were often registered using personal information of thousands of identity theft victims, and the wire transfers were directed by the organizations using fake names and fraudulent identifications. The operation would then use 'hawalas' -- a system in which money is transferred internationally outside of the formal banking system -- to direct the pilfered funds to accounts belonging to U.S.-based individuals.

Comments

Unwanted Competitor

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes them any less legitimate than the 'real' IRS? It's a scam either way.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[BringsApples]

They don't have the trigger-happy militarized police department behind them.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[ShanghaiBill]

Too bad the police don't focus more on real crime. I received dozens of these IRS scam calls, all with thick Indian accents. Everyone I know received them as well. That means there were billions of calls being made. Yet, it took the feds years to do anything about it. And now they arrest 61 people. There is no way that all of those calls were placed by only 61 people.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[freeze128]

The "REAL IRS" is a division of the U.S. government, and abides by the same rules of bureaucracy. Have you ever filed a form for your income tax in the United States? If you have, then you already know:

- The U.S. government does not perform legal notifications over the phone. They will send you a letter via US Mail. Sometimes 2 or 3, just to make sure you got it.
- The U.S. government knows you by your Tax ID number (or Social Security number). It's on every tax form you submit.
- The U.S. government absolutely DOES NOT REQUIRE payment by GREEN DOT CREDIT CARDS! They will accept personal checks, cashiers checks, and even direct withdrawals.
- The U.S. government doesn't use call centers in India for the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service is by definition "INTERNAL". There is absolutely no need to involve any other country in this aspect.

This is how you tell a scammer from the REAL IRS. If the person calling you seems to think differently about any of the above, HANG UP. It's a scam.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[ShanghaiBill]

HANG UP. It's a scam.

NO!!! Do not hang up on scammers. You should string them along and then find an excuse to put them on hold. I usually tell them to wait while I go get my credit card. Their scams only work if they can quickly weed through reasonably intelligent people, to zero in on the idiots. If we all waste their time, even just a minute or two, the economics no longer work in their favor. So play along, act stupid, and trick them into waiting.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[TheRaven64]

Most of them were probably made by people in India being paid a token amount (who may not have even realised that they weren't working legitimately for the IRS). Those 61 probably represent the ones that actually made the money.

Re:Unwanted Competitor

[TharMonk]

Most of them were probably made by people in India being paid a token amount (who may not have even realised that they weren't working legitimately for the IRS). Those 61 probably represent the ones that actually made the money.

Actually, they understood that, perfectly. Your good scammers need to be intelligent to actually convince people to part with their money, and they need to know that they are running a scam, not actually representing a governmental agency in another country.

After receiving 4 calls in one day from them, I started calling them back. They would ask for my name, and I would remind them that they called my number, and left messages insisting that I owed money to the IRS, so all they needed to do was look at my phone number, and tell me who I was and how much I owed. They would then hang up on me. After about a dozen attempts, they recognized my number, and once answered the phone with a "f*ck you" and immediately hung up. After the 20th time I called them back, in a row (yes, I was bored, and apparently there were 3 or 4 people answering calls on the number they were using at the time, so I started recognizing their voices,) I lied to them and told them that I had just called the IRS, who denied having anything to do with this, and who had directed me to the FBI, who would be calling them, shortly. In a rare moment of "fsck this" the scammer said "Yes sir, you are right, this is a scam. If you fell for it, we were going to get you to send us all of the money in your bank account." I was shocked by this, and also excited, because I was recording the call (I'm in Virginia, a 1 party consent state.) So I drew him out, and he explained to me that he wasn't worried about the law coming to get him, because "we have been doing this for years. They never catch us. They never going to catch us." He then asked me, politely, if I would please stop calling them. I told him to stop calling my number, if he didn't want to keep hearing from me, dozens of times for every call they made to me, and he agreed.

They did call me back the next day (darned scammers, not keeping a good Do Not Call List,) but, after that, it was over a month before they put me back into the regular rotation.

Yes, I still have the recording. I had plans to post it on youtube to shame the government into some kind of action, but, when I looked it up online, I found that this was so well known for so many years that it was clear that the scammer was essentially right... no one was coming for them.

This news article made me smile. I kind of hoped they got the "they never going to catch us" guy.

Spoofing numbers

[AK Marc]

It's technically trivial to block that type of spoofing. The only hold-back is that there's no penalty for the phone companies that sell to the scammers. Charge their US provider with accessory to the crime, and fine them $100M and this could never happen again. Require that all CLID sent be a valid call-back for the number sent.

Yes, I know that this will be annoying for the outsourced call centers, where HP sells their call center to India and the Indian company calls an American with the CLID of the 1-800 number for HP, so the call looks like it's coming from the US, and if called back, gets to the right queue. But those edge cases don't justify allowing free range for the scammers.

Re:Spoofing numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all that hard to block spoofing and also allow HP to outsource its call center. You allow only HP to spoof lines as HP. Therefore in HP owns a call distribution node, any calls routed through it can use HP's number and caller ID, even if they come from India.
Under this system, no one would be able to spoof a number they don't actually own, so you can hold the caller responsible for the content of the calls. If they don't want to be held responsible, they'd best be careful not to route bad actors through their network! Phone scams would disappear overnight.

Re:How could you fall for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Old folks get scared and will do what they're told. As will non-tech-savy folk.

The bigger question is, when the hell are the telcos going to be forced to fix the spoofing problem.

Re:How could you fall for this?

[ScentCone]

Many people aren't very smart, and many people are terrified of the IRS or immigration officials. And it doesn't take very many people to fall for this - out of the millions they call - to make it worth the trouble for the bad guys.

Re:How could you fall for this?

[FatdogHaiku]

Yup. I couldn't believe back in the XP day when someone would call saying the FBI had "seized their computer" with a lock screen instructing the user to buy Green Dot cards and call a phone number to get their computer unlocked...
I enjoyed telling the user that if the FBI seizes a computer, you are normally in the back of one of their cars at the time. Also, the FBI does not cut you loose for a bit of cash. And lastly, the lock screen was just Internet Explorer in kiosk mode...

Re:How could you fall for this?

[PRMan]

My dad sent $2500 to some scammers claiming to be the police with my cousin in jail. He couldn't believe me that he was being scammed, even though I said, "That's not how bail works! And even so, you think the police take bail in CVS cards?"

Re:If the voice is Indian, hang up

[arth1]

What useful message would EVER come from an Indian caller?

"Your Kashmir Indica block is ready for pickup"?

I Almost Never Agree

[JimSadler]

In phone rooms the owners often tell the staff that it is a moral wrong to leave stupid people with a penny in their pocket. I really never agreed with that. But this IRS scam is so stupid and transparent that anyone who feel for it has to be so stupid that they really are a menace to society. Money gives the really stupid a certain amount of power. I almost agree with the phone room owners in this case. If anything prosecute these jerks for making annoying phone calls. Obviously phone room prosecutions are symbolic in nature and not intended to shut down a crooked industry. Most years the feds prosecute about 20 phone rooms. They go after the big dollar scams as a rule. For Lauderdale easily has over 1,000 phone rooms going on any given day. There are zero honest rooms. Some of the schemes are so complex that the staff doesn't even know they are involved in a criminal enterprise. Sometimes it is done by running one room that makes tiny sales and another room across town that uses the leads from the tiny sales to recall the buyer and sock it to them big time with a scam. The first room never knows that the second room exists. One clue that you are about to be taken is when you are asked to write a check with the company names initials. In other words the friendly salesman says make the check out to N.M.I. instead of National Mortgage incorporated. That check will then be cashed by National Marketing Inc.. So if the feds do come knocking national Mortgage claims no knowledge and they just happened to rent space to a marketing company that closed down and left town. These companies never sell in their own states. That way they only have to worry about the feds.

I hope that stops the calls

[No Longer an AC]

I've been getting the following for months.

I need you or your retained attorney of records to return the call. The issue at hand is extremely time sensitive. My phone number is 213-289-####.

Do not disregard this message and do return the call. Now if you don't return the call and I don't hear from your attorney either then the only thing I can do is wish you a good luck as the situation totally unfolds on you. Good bye.

I blocked part of the phone number just in case it belongs to some innocent person, but it probably doesn't and I was tempted to leave it. The phone number is also different every time they call anyway, but the message is the same.

Anyway, the message sounds so ominous but also so ridiculous. It doesn't give a hint at who is delivering this threat. Could it be the IRS? An old landlord? My ex-wife? It's the best, because by not saying it could apply to almost anyone.

I do have an unpaid parking ticket from about 25 years ago.

I guess "good luck" is on my side though because the situation has not totally unfolded on me.

Let's go after the low-level phone people as well

[BUL2294]

In addition to those who perpetuated the scam, I feel that since the Thune, India police know the low-level employees who actually spoke from the scripts, I'd love to see the US indict those people, have them beg their families for Rupees to fight extradition in an Indian court, lose that fight, put them on a plane to the US, then let them beg their families again for $$$ for an expensive American lawyer, then rot in a Federal prison for the next 5+ years, then be banned from the USA for life over the felony conviction. With enough stories like that to go around, even destitute people will refuse to work for scammers--including those working for "Windows Company Support".

I have no sympathy for anyone at any level of this scam, including the low-level people following the scripts and making/answering the calls--those pretending to be IRS agents & scaring old ladies into giving up their life savings. These people know English and therefore know they are impersonating an agent of a foreign government (in this case, the big bad US Government, and its unlimited resources). It stands to reason that the foreign government in question might come after them one day. They probably also got a (teeny tiny) cut of each successful con, which makes this all the worse... Make an example out of them...

Ha ha

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I used to toy with these idiots and waste massive amounts of their time. They'd get so upset that they'd be screaming at me before they hung up (I counted that as a "win" for me).

There's no letdown like thinking you got a live one on the line, wasting 30 minutes reeling him in, only to have him start asking "What does it feel like to bang a goat?" or "Have I wasted enough of your time or should we keep going?"

I loved asking them if they had "updog", and when they'd ask "What is updog?" I'd yell "NOT MUCH MOTHERFUCKER!!"

Re:How could you fall for this?

[bws111]

The things that make them 'rather obvious scams' to you may not indicate 'rather obvious scam' to someone in a different situation, regardless of any 'mental health issues'. The fact you can't understand that is a character flaw on your part, not theirs.

Things that mark it as 'obvious scam':
      They called you instead of sending a letter, etc. - Maybe the person already has debt problems and is used to getting collection calls demanding payment. Whats one more caller? Maybe the person actually HAS tax problems and has received a letter, but has not taken any action.

      Indian caller who barely speaks english - 25 years ago if you called customer service for any company you spoke to someone in the US who could speak english. Then companies started contracting out those call centers to India. There was no great announcement that this was happening, but when you called the same number you always called you were now talking to someone in India. Everyone knows their are government contractors. Is it entirely beyond reason that the government would do the same as those companies did? No.

      Method of payment - 20 years ago it would have been unthinkable to pay McDonalds or a vending machine with a credit card, now it is commonplace. A very short time ago it would be unthinkable that you just tap your phone and a payment is made, now it is commonplace. It used to be if you wanted a CVS gift card you went to CVS, now you can buy a CVS card at Lowes. Maybe the method of payment requested seems unusual or odd, but is it really any more odd than buying a Coke with a phone?

In short, the more changes you have witnessed in your lifetime the less 'odd' any new changes seem. Things that to YOU may be giant red flags are just another change in an endless stream of changes.

And even if they DO think something is odd they may pay anyway. Most older people are risk averse, and the things they value most are their home and their independence. Threaten to take either of those away and you have triggered a very strong fear response. The risk of losing a little money to a scam pales in comparison to losing their home or independence, so they pay.

So why don't they ask for help if they suspect a scam? Because of assholes like you that think that is a sign they need to be 'taken care of and protected', thereby losing their independence.

Re:Let's go after the low-level phone people as we

[plover]

I'd rather have them rot in an Indian jail, thank you very much. As a taxpayer, I'd be paying to have them rot in an American jail. Let outsourcing save me some money for a change.