How A Massive India Call Center Swindled 15,000 Americans (nytimes.com)

An FBI agent based in India says the country has now become a major hub for call-center fraud, blaming "a demographic bulge of computer-savvy, young, English-speaking job seekers; a vast call-center culture; super-efficient technology; and what can only be described as ingenuity." The Justice Depatment recently indicted one company for scamming "hundreds of millions of dollars" from over 15,000 victims, placing more than 1.8 million phone calls to Americans, and Slashdot reader retroworks brings an update: The New York Times has an interesting blow-by-blow story on two India tech center employees who informed on their call center fraud operation, which targeted Americans (especially recent immigrants) with fraudulent IRS calls and other scams. [May be paywalled; free version here.] The building was surrounded by police, phone lines cut. Eventually 630 of the employees were released, and charges were brought against 70 managers and executives of the call center.
The operation filled a seven-story high-rise, and the Times reports that after the raid, "fraudulent IRS calls to Americans dropped 95% percent, according to the Better Business Bureau." But they add that one former employee believes the scams will continue. Within weeks of the raid, he'd been offered a nearly identical job: calling Americans and claiming that their computer was infected with a virus.

Comments

Caught a client just in time

[Chas]

Many of my clients are older people who simply wouldn't know tech savvy if you drowned them in it.

A while back, one of my clients' wives calls us and tells us he's on the phone with this tech support company in India and they're asking for several hundred dollars to remove a virus.

I told her to pull their cablemodem out of the wall and then hang up with the guy. Don't even discuss it with her husband (as it'd give the guy from "wherever" a chance to do something to the machine).

Once he was disconnected I had him hang up and explained the scam to him, while the call center guy tried calling back.

I then pointed out that he already had both Kaspersky Antivirus and Malwarebytes on there.

And on the off chance he was infected, I had him pull down a bootable rescue CD and scan that way.

Saved him several hundred bucks and possibly getting his machine infected.

Re:Caught a client just in time

[amiga3D]

I see popups all the time telling me my computer has a virus. They often show me all these windows .dll files that are infected. Amazing as I'm running Ubuntu. I've grown my banned url list quite a bit.

Re:FBI Jurisdiction

[Fencepost]

The FBI can't arrest, but they can work with enforcement agencies that do have jurisdiction (local, (Indian) state, (Indian) national) and provide resources and information.

The story itself talks about one of the senior local officials who won't talk much about the investigation, but "he will describe the raid, in loving, cinematic detail: How at 10 p.m., after the last of the call center staff had arrived for the night shift, 200 police officers streamed up the main staircase, blocking every exit and detaining all 700 people who worked inside." That's not 200 FBI agents, that's 200 local officers.

I haven't read the entire story yet, but part of the reason that the whistleblowers contacted the FTC (and through them the FBI) may be corruption - if they went through local channels and picked the wrong person, that person might have simply gone back to the leaders of this with their hand out and the information on the whistleblowers. The FBI may not have jurisdiction, but they also don't have a reputation for accepting bribes.

I switched banks because they used an india CC

[EmperorOfCanada]

My bank outsourced to an indian call center and the next time I called them for something I asked where I was calling. The guy evaded my questions so I dropped my account of 20+ years to a bank that uses local people. I have to wait a tiny bit longer for them to answer but they actually answer my questions. So long CIBC.

I am an Indian living in th US and I do the same

[Anonymous Coward]

... for any bank with CC outside the US because I am afraid of identity theft.

Good Return Rate

[RockDoctor]

FTFS : 1.8 million calls ; 15,000 US victims. 120 calls to get a successful scamming.

That's not too bad a return rate for a scam.

Therefore the scamming will continue.