India-Based Call Centers Indicted for Scam Operations

Over the past few years, American citizens have been plagued by an influx of scam and robotic calls attempting to exploit unsuspecting victims for money or personal information. In fact, many phone users now avoid picking up phone calls altogether, out of fear scammers may be attempting to get through by using call routing technology, or by pretending to be a legitimate call center agent for a company or agency. Thankfully, the tides may be turning the other way.

This week, the Department of Justice for the Northern District of Georgia announced multiple Indian-based call centers, as well as their directors, have been indicted for attempting to defraud American citizens through spam phone calls. According to an official release, the indictment covers multiple fraud campaigns, where Indian call center agents pretended to be social security agents, IRS agents, and bank loan officers, asking Georgia citizens to send money to illegitimate sources. Many of these incidents exploited eldery citizens, causing some to lose significant portions of their savings to bad actors.

“Scam robocalls cause emotional and financial devastation to victims, particularly our vulnerable and elderly populations,” said U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine.  “These India-based call centers allegedly scared their victims and stole their money, including some victims’ entire life savings.”

Further legal proceedings will still need to take place, but this is certainly good news for American consumers. Fraudulent activity is running rampant these days, and has only been growing as a result of increased digital activity brought on by the pandemic. Exploiting innocent, vulnerable citizens is a horrendous crime, and hopefully these indictments will cause lawmakers across the country to create harsher penalties to prevent this activity from continuing. Phones are a necessary resource in the modern age, and users shouldn’t hesitate to pick up a call out of fear of being manipulated by bad actors.

Edited by Maurice Nagle