Indian Police on Wednesday arrested more than 750 bogus call centre employees in the western province of Maharashtra for stealing millions of dollars from U.S. citizens by posing as American tax officials.
The accused used to telephone U.S. citizens after obtaining the lists of US tax defaulters and used threats to obtain their bank details, failing which they would allegedly threaten them with dire consequences, including legal action.
After obtaining the bank details of Americans, the scammers used to withdraw money from their accounts.
During the call they acted as officials from the United States Internal Revenue Service. The fraud had been going on for over a year.
According to reports, around 200 police officers raided the call centres in Thane city of western province following a tip-off. The scam is estimated to be more than worth $150,000 (£118,000) a day.
Indian police is investigating the case and they have also contacted FBI officials to help them solve the one of the biggest scams in Indian history.
"A total of 772 employees were detained, investigations against them are going on," Police spokesperson Sukhada Narkar told reporters.
As per the reports, Indians shared 70 percent of the earnings while 30 percent was shared to their American counterparts.
Police have also recovered 851 hard disks, high-end servers, and other electronic equipment that were being use in the bogus call centre to dupe Americans. India is hub of major call centre which provide back office services to American companies dealing in IT, Banking etc.
In India call centre employees are expected to ape the western employees they have replaced in terms of accents, slang and even names. Cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, NCR, Mumbai and Pune are major location of these call centres.
Meanwhile, there have been reports in American media about similar-sounding scams, which authorities have said might be operated out of India.
