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24 People Have Now Been Sentenced In India-Based Phone-Scam Case (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A total of 24 people who pleaded guilty to their involvement in a massive years-long phone scam often involving fake Internal Revenue Service and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officials have now been given prison sentences from four to 20 years. The indictment was originally filed in October 2016 against 61 people and includes charges of conspiracy to commit identity theft, impersonation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud, and money laundering. If victims didn't pay up, callers threatened arrest, deportation, or heavier fines. There were also related scams involving fake payday loans and bogus U.S. government grants, according to the criminal complaint. The lead defendant was Miteshkumar Patel, who was given 20 years.
A whole 24 people? That should solve the problem.
The root of the problem is the American telecom companies that enable these scams by offering spoofing services to criminals. Some big fines on Verizon and AT&T would do way more good than going after some low level scammers in Mumbai.
Twenty four in a population of 1.5 billion, and churning out IT people by the 100-thousands each year. For jobs they resort to working at a "call center." 24 - barely an atom-layer shave off an iceberg sized problem. Let me know when the calls have all stopped. And then you have Karachi, across the border - even more "call centers."
then you both have no clue. The feature that allows this to happen is actually a business feature utilised by millions of legitimate businesses.
...to trick their customers into thinking their call center is actually not in Bangalore. Yeah, what a noble cause.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, it was designed to present outgoing calls as originating from (for example) the main switchboard / reception phone number
Spoofing from one number to another controlled by the same legal entity is reasonable. Allowing criminals to spoof a random phone number that they DO NOT OWN is not.
The telecoms can shut this activity down very quickly if they are given sufficient financial incentive to do so, like maybe $10M per day in fines until it is fixed.