Nearly 800 employees of an Indian call center were detained and 70 were arrested after police conducted a raid after the center was suspected of stealing millions of dollars from Americans. Call center employees were impersonating employees and officers of the Internal Revenue Service and were raking in more than $150,000 per day for a year, according to a published report.
The raid was conducted by more than 200 police officers in Mumbai, and police called it one of the largest raids in the country’s history. Police were tipped off to the illegal activity by neighbors.
Those who were arrested were charged with fraud, wrongful impersonation, and violating India’s internet safety law.
The callers told their American victims they were conducting a “tax revision” or that they had defaulted on payments to the IRS and would then obtain their personal financial information and withdraw money from their bank accounts, according to Param Bir Singh, a senior police officer in Mumbai who led the raid.
For those advocating against a law requiring the IRS to outsource some of its collection efforts to third-party agencies, this news is an early Christmas present. One of the arguments those against the plan have made is that individuals will not be able to tell the difference between an actual collection agency contacting them about a real tax debt, or scammers trying to steal money.
In India: “It looked like a regular office building and employed a lot of young people who spoke English and had a good knowledge of computers. It was a very sophisticated operation they were running.”
The Federal Trade Commission has noted that Indian call centers are “emerging as a source of concern.”
