US citizens lost over $10 billion due to phishing calls by illegal Indian call centres in 2022, as per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data.
Most of the victims of these fraud calls from Indian phishing gangs were elderly US citizens above the age of 60 years who lost over $3 billion, Times Of India reported citing FBI data.
After several incidents were reported in 2022, the FBI has now deputed a permanent representative at the US embassy in New Delhi. The representative will work closely with the CBI, Interpol and the Delhi Police to bust these gangs that have put India under the threat to be termed as the hub of such illegal call centres.
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Several Americans lost a total of $10.2 billion in 2022 so far, which is a 47 per cent increase from 2021’s $6.9 billion, to such fraud calls.
FBI’s South Asia head Suhel Daud told the publication that "romance-related" frauds reported were worth Rs 8,000 crore in 2021 and Rs 8,000 crore in the last 11 months of 2022. Losses due to "tech support" crimes were as much as $3 billion in the last two years – $347 million in 2021 and $781 million in 2022 so far.
“It may not be a national security concern yet, but the reputation (of a country) is involved, and we don’t want India to suffer on that count,” Daud told the publication.
He also noted that the FBI’s website has registered 8.5 lakh complaints in 2021 and over 7.8 lakh complaints so far in 2022 in regard to internet crimes. Those complaints included cyber crime related to investment ($3 billion), business email compromise ($2.4 billion), personal data breach ($1.2 billion), romance ($1 billion) and tech support ($781 million).
whodoithinkuR on December 26th, 2022 at 15:24 UTC »
“Hello this is the IRS calling. The Police are on the way to arrest you, please give me your SSN and wire us $10,000 to avoid going to jail”
Hair-Help-Plea on December 26th, 2022 at 13:36 UTC »
I’ve been trying to convince my grandmother and her friends not to answer unknown numbers for this reason. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message or send a letter in the mail. For critical matters, IRS/police/debt collectors will not text or email you, and they wont communicate through Words With Friends, Facebook, ScrabbleGo. I’ve made flyers about romance scams for them, made videos, made notecards.
It’s exhausting trying to keep them from getting scammed (and for some of them, getting scammed AGAIN). Everyone needs to talk to their elderly loved ones, friends, neighbors about this. Education/awareness is the most effective way to mitigate this, currently.
ETA: clarifying after some (helpful) comments pointing this out — yes it’s true that debt collectors will also send emails, and sometimes texts, but there should also be a corresponding physical letter, or series of letters, via the postal mail which should align with that email/text. The point to drive home when discussing this is to be highly skeptical of any demand for payment that is only received via digital channel.
If you have a loved one that is receiving collection demands that you want to validate, whether it’s the legitimacy of the debt or the legality of the communication methods, please refer to this FTC guide to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA): https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-text
There are some great suggestions in the comments on the topic of approaching this with your elderly family and neighbors.
ETA2: since people are still commenting on this thread I wanted to add…please don’t shame them for falling for a scam when trying to address this. Try to be as compassionate as you can, because it’s not going to be the last scam they encounter, and they’re much more likely to bring a questionable contact attempt to your attention if you were compassionate rather than scornful. Try to help them learn with as little obvious judgement as possible.
omnibossk on December 26th, 2022 at 12:36 UTC »
The world telephone network is hoplessly outdated. It should not be possible to spoof phone numbers.