Image copyright PA Image caption Police said scammers posed as the officers of the US Internal Revenue Service

Police in the western Indian city of Thane have arrested more than 750 people suspected of defrauding US citizens from a fake call centre.

Officers say the suspects obtained lists of US tax defaulters and used threats to obtain their bank details.

The scam is said to have netted more than $150,000 (£118,000) a day, making it one of the biggest frauds in India's history.

Thane police officials said they were contacting the FBI to ask for help.

Some 70 of those detained were formally arrested, police said, with the rest released pending further inquiries. Nine people believed to have led the scam have been identified.

The scammers pretended to be members of the US Internal Revenue Service, and told victims they owed back taxes.

In some cases, the victims were duped into buying gift vouchers from different companies and bullied into revealing voucher ID numbers, police said.

The scammers then made purchases with the voucher numbers.

Police say those involved in the scam at the Indian end retained 70% of the earnings, with 30% going to their US collaborators.

Paramvir Singh, the police commissioner of Thane, told reporters that 851 hard disks, high-end servers, and other electronic equipment had been seized.

Mr Singh said overnight raids on Wednesday had lasted well into the morning, and involved more than 200 policemen who had raided buildings in three locations in the city.

Thane police superintendent Mahesh Patil told BBC Hindi that the investigation could open up cases from other countries as well.

A US State Department official said: "We have seen reports and are following the situation closely to confirm any US citizen involvement. We would refer you to the local Indian authorities for further details on the case."</s>Posing as IRS agents, the telecallers duped many Americans into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’

The Thane police have busted a racket in which telecallers were calling up American citizens posing as agents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and duping them into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’. The police have arrested 70 accused in the case, while 700 are still under the scanner.

According to police officials, acting on a tip-off, a team of 40 officers and 120 constables conducted raids on three buildings on Mira Road, from which the racket was allegedly being run.

“Telephonic conversations via Voice Over Internet Protocol [VOIP] facility were being made when we raided the three places and we also found recordings of calls made to U.S. citizens in these spaces, which were being run like call centres.”

“A total of 772 people were taken into custody for inquiries,” said Thane Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.

Explaining the modus operandi of the accused, Mr. Singh said the accused obtained contact details of U.S. citizens in bulk from gangs that illegally sell such information. “The callers would call the targets and claim to be from the IRS. They would then tell the targets that some irregularities had been detected in their tax payments, that they had become defaulters, that they would be booked and would face imprisonment for at least three months. Once a target believed them, the callers would start talking about payment of fines. After an amount agreeable to both parties was reached at, the targets would be asked to pay via international gift cards or iTunes,” Mr. Singh said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Parag Manere added, “Eight out of ten times, the targets would not believe the callers and hang up. But even if only a handful of people paid the ‘fines’ every day, the accused were still making thousands of dollars from each target.”

According to inquiries so far, the racket has been active for around a year, and the accused are believed to have cheated thousands of U.S. citizens to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees. The police are still trying to get an estimate of the amount of money that the accused have made till date.

After preliminary inquiries, the police identified 70 of the detained suspects who were heading the racket and placed them under arrest, while the rest are still being questioned. The accused have been booked under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act, and the police have seized hard drives and computers, which will now be examined to get a more accurate sense of the extent of the racket.

Officials said a large number of other suspects were young men and women who were trained in American accent and legal terms before being put to work. The police have also launched a separate investigation into the source of the contact details of the targets.</s>The issue of fake certificates being used for employment in India and abroad has begun to increasingly worry universities in the State.

The universities find themselves in a position not to take any action against fraudulent players because they do not directly deal with the job applicants and companies do not share information of fake certificate holders. The introduction of digital signature and hologram in Calicut University in recent years, for example, has not helped to check the use of fake certificates. The number of fake certificates of Calicut University used for employment purposes rather steadily increased in

the last five years.

When only three fake cases were detected in 2012, the number of fake cases increased to 26 in 2013, 36 in 2014, and 38 in 2015. Fifteen fake certificates of the university were detected so far in the current year.

The issue of fake certificates is almost the same in other universities in the State, said agencies involved in certificate verification.

But the number of fake degree certificates of Calicut University used for jobs abroad was more than that of other universities. “It may be because of the demand for our degrees,” said a senior officer of the university.

No case has been booked over fake certificates, though the university detected 118 forged documents in the last five years. University authorities said that the involvement of an outside agency for certificate verification deprives the university the opportunity to

catch and book the fraud players. When an applicant submits the certificates for a job, the company refers the document to certified agencies for verification. The agency then sends the document to the university to ascertain its veracity.

If the certificate is found fake, neither the university nor the agency will be able to reach the applicant as the company drops the matter there.</s>Assistant police commissioner Bharat Shelke told Reuters the alleged scammers posed as U.S. Internal Revenue Service officials and left victims voicemails accusing them of tax evasion and threatening them with arrest.

"Fearing arrest, some used to call back, and employees at the call center then demanded a few thousand dollars to settle the case," he said. In lieu of cash, employees also accepted alternatives such as numbers from unused iTunes and gift cards.

The 70 people arrested were among more than 700 detained when police raided makeshift call centers - a bungalow, an office building and a shopping center in the Mumbai suburb of Thane - late on Tuesday. Shelke said an estimated $36.5 million was extorted from U.S. residents.

On Thursday, a court granted police custody of all 70, including the owner of one of the call center buildings, until Oct. 10. But police said they have not yet captured the ring leaders of the scheme, which they suspect was run out of the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Authorities say callers were trained to switch their Indian accent for a passable American one. They studied a script six pages long that explained how conversations would develop, with tips on tackling doubts and suspicions.

According to training documents seen by Reuters, if targets asked for permission to speak to an attorney, workers were told to reply (sic): "This would be termed third party discloser, as per the federal law and if you go ahead and do that IRS will have completes right to go ahead discloser to national television, local newspaper and your employer. Moreover, it would be a penalty charges up to 50,000$."

A police official said several of the call center workers were high school graduates who were "very convincing in recorded conversations."

Callers were paid between 10,000 rupees ($150) and 70,000 rupees ($1,050) every month, police said.

An advertisement placed on Aug. 30 by one of the companies raided by police said it was a seeking a "call center executive" to handle calls to the United States and Australia. Experience was not necessary. The salary was described as a "good hike" and the bonus "unlimited."

Tax agencies in countries including the United States, Canada and Australia have all issued warnings over scam callers. Last year, a Pennsylvania man who helped coordinate a fraud in which India-based callers preyed on vulnerable Americans by pretending to be U.S. government agents was sentenced to 14-1/2 years in prison.

Police told the court on Thursday that employees applauded when victims transferred large sums electronically to the call center. "Employees were aware of the fraud, but since they were getting a good salary, they remained silent," Shelke said.

The organizers of the scheme were cautious about paper trails, said another police official, Mukund Hatote. "Workers did not receive employment letters ... and [the organizers] rented office space without paperwork."

The 70 detainees were driven to court in large vans. Most were young men who walked with heads bowed, their faces obscured by a raised hand or a tied kerchief. Inside, the judge heard arguments from about two dozen defense lawyers who insisted their clients were following orders, and that the scheme's masterminds were still at large.

"I got to know we are doing illegal things within a week after joining," one defendant told Reuters as he returned to a police van, "but I saw many getting good performance bonuses. So I didn't leave."
Police in the western Indian city of Thane arrest more than 750 people suspected of defrauding U.S. citizens from a fake call center.