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Indian police busts call centre scam duping U.S. nationals

Xinhua, October 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

Police in Indian state of Maharashtra have unearthed a scam, where employees used to pose as U.S. tax officials and threaten American citizens over telephone into sending them money, officials said Thursday.

Police in western Thane city on Thursday said they have arrested 70 people and were questioning more than 630 others for allegedly duping thousands of Americans.

"So far 70 people have been arrested and show cause notices have been sent to 630 other employees working in these call centres," a senior police official Param Bir Singh told media.

The scam is said to have brought in more than 150,000 U.S. dollars a day, police officials said.

During the past one year, the scam is estimated to have robbed U.S. citizens of 55 million U.S. dollars.

Reports said the scam run by fake call centres was unearthed by police on tip off by a disgruntled call centre employee.

Fraudsters posing as employees of Internal Revenue Service (U.S. government agency responsible for tax collection) used to call people in the U.S. from the call centres and accuse them of not paying taxes and subsequently threatening them with jail term if they did not pay up immediately.

Reports said U.S. federal agencies have got in touch with Indian officials to get details of the scam and their U.S. collaborators.

A New Delhi based television news channel NDTV said at nine call centres in Thane, executives were imparted training to pretend as taxmen and given detailed cheat-sheet to prepare and questions they would likely face.

"They would make threatening calls to honest taxpayers in the US, ask them to deposit money through pre-paid cards," NDTV quoted Param Bir Singh as having said.

Police officials said apart from making the conned Americans to directly deposit money into bank accounts, in some cases, they were asked to buy gift vouchers as a way of transferring funds.

India is home to call centre businesses and employees thousands of workers. The centres are part of an outsourcing industry. Endit