US indicts Indian call centre scammers

Six call centers were responsible for millions of IRS and loan fraud scams, says DoJ

Life

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A US Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation originally indicted VoIP provider Sampark and its director Guarav Gupta last November, alleging that the company forwarded tens of millions of scam calls.

Investigators have now indicted six call centres believed to have used the VoIP service to forward their calls.

The scammers targeted residents with multiple ruses. In one, they pose as federal agents to persuade victims that their social security numbers (SSNs) have been used in crimes and then demand payment. In another, they pretend to be from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and try to claim back taxes. The call centres also pretend to be loan companies, offering fake loans in return for an up-front fee.

In one case fraudsters kept a woman in Georgia on the phone for 11 hours to convince her that she was at risk of arrest. They persuaded her to buy $35,000 in gift cards from multiple stores and then took the numbers from her.

The companies indicted are Achivers A Spirit of BPO Solutions Private Ltd, Fintalk Global, Global Enterprises, Shivaay Communication Private Ltd, SM Technomine Private Ltd, and Technomind Info Solutions.

The November indictment accuses E Sampark of forwarding calls between May 2015 and June 2020, costing victims over $20 million. The company forwarded calls via VoIP providers in the UK along with around 60 servers of its own hosted in Florida. The servers contained over 130,000 recordings of scam calls, including robocall voice messages.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already implemented rules forcing carriers to verify callers on their networks to help fight scam callers.

Ⓒ Future Publishing

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