
India’s Call-Center Talents Put to a Criminal Use: Swindling Americans - flippyhead
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/world/asia/india-call-centers-fraud-americans.html?ref=technology
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tdumitrescu
For many of us it can be hard to imagine what kind of gullible dweebs go for
this. The other week I was quite surprised to learn from family that my father
had given money to one of these scams (the "you have computer virus"
variation). This is the man who brought our first personal computer home in
the early 80s, got me set up with BASIC, still keeps his Fortran code around,
i.e. not technically illiterate by any means. But you know what? He's in his
80s, and though he doesn't show any signs of dementia/senility/Alzheimer's, he
just doesn't have the energy and interest to keep up with all this stuff
anymore, and at his age he's used to getting a lot of _legitimate_ calls from
strangers working at doctors' offices, benefits agencies etc. The same man who
taught me to be overly paranoid about anything a stranger asks of you now
doesn't have the willpower to see through these scams - why yes, his 7-year-
old malware-riddled Windows PC sure does seem like it could have a virus, and
this seems like oh just a business trying to profit by cleaning your computer
for you, and if they can manage it where all these anti-virus companies have
failed him then great! We're really in an era where extracting money from old
people has never been easier.

~~~
amalag
My dad is technically illiterate but all he needs is a web browser so I got
him a Chromebook. It is more than enough for most people and if Google can
keep it malware free it is a big accomplishment.

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docdeek
"If they reached a person who was sufficiently terrified or gullible — this
was known in the business as a “sale” — they would instruct that person to buy
thousands of dollars’ worth of iTunes cards to avoid prosecution, they said…”

Fascinating story but how is it that people believe their government accepts
payments in iTunes gift cards?

The money transfers also referenced in the article sound a little more
legitimate (though still not sounding kosher) but is there some reason to
believe that a US government agency would ever ask for payment in anything
other than dollars?

~~~
notahacker
That was my first thought. That said, it sounds like they may be targeting
first generation immigrants, and their successes come when they get through to
someone who's not very familiar with US norms, and perhaps rather more
familiar with the concept that problems sometimes go away after making
illegitimate payments in unconventional ways to officials.

My second thought was to wonder how purchases and redemptions of thousands of
dollars worth of iTunes gift cards managed not to be flagged up by Apple,
bearing in my there's certainly enough money flowing through their systems for
law enforcement to be very interested in monitoring their compliance with
KYC/AML regulations?

~~~
jdavis703
They're probably just reselling the cards. No need for anyone to buy digital
assets from Apple.

~~~
pranjalv123
eventually someone needs to buy digital assets from apple for the cards to be
worth anything

~~~
jstanley
Not if a large enough group of people is willing to accept iTunes gift cards
as payment.

As long as they are a token that is sufficiently expensive to get hold of, I
don't see why an economy can't work even if nobody ever spends them with
Apple. It'd be like an economy based on gold coins in which nobody ever melts
the coins down for their value as raw gold.

~~~
notahacker
My understanding is that the real bottleneck is that if you want to buy iTunes
gift cards in large denominations you have to go to Apple or a reputable
retailer and specifically ask the vendor to put up to $500 on the card and
charge it to you. If you're doing that several times in a row to it probably
ought to raise a flag with Apple, the vendor or possibly your bank.

Relative to cash or gold, the token also has the not insignificant problem
that it's time limited and can be secretly spent or voided, which should
result in the card being substantially discounted (and checked for validity
with Apple) each time it changes hands. It's also officially "not for
resale"...

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jessriedel
Off-topic: I've noticed in the past few years that many call center workers
have a new, distinct sort of accent and cadence. I don't think this is just a
change in the language demographics of the workers because (1) I can still
usually distinguish Indian speakers, although I could be wrong, and (2) it's
really a different shared cadence rather than just different sounds.

Has there been any systematic change in how the language training for call
center workers is done?

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xtacy
It's unfortunate that such a scheme exists, which pollutes the youth of the
nation. I too received several calls from an "unknown" number trying to extort
money by having me install some anti-virus software to fix a non-existent
computer issue.

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gottebp
I'd really love to have a uBlock Origin/AdBlock type of program to maintain my
phone's calling number blacklist.

eg: If more than X Android users block a number it should block automatically
for everyone.

Guessing the blacklist must not be accessible via the Android/iOS APIs or this
would already exist.

~~~
tyingq
This kind of scam, though, works just fine if they change their phone number
every day, hour, or minute...and with VOIP, there's little added cost or
complexity to do so.

There really needs to be something for phone numbers similar to rfc2827 for ip
spoofing. Or, better still, a reliable way to map a phone number to a legal
entity.

------
CapitalistCartr
Normally I tell these guys I'm with the National Terrorist Tracking Center and
we've determined they are a terrorist, etc. The last time I decided to change
it up a bit and went with, "What are you wearing?" etc. On speakerphone. With
my wife listening. Well, wife now. We were in the parking lot of her hair
salon having her hair done for our wedding. We have a similar sense of humor.
You'd think by now I'd be on _their_ do-not-call list.

~~~
nogridbag
I've listened to enough of these calls on youtube to realize most of these
scammers think they're untouchable (and surely have been for several years) so
unfortunately I doubt telling them you're from a terrorist tracking center
will have any impact :)

While not an Indian scam, I was getting tons of calls for the vacation package
scam for months from random phone numbers. If you're not familiar with it,
they basically say "You've one of the following: A brand new SUV, and HD TV,
or a vacation package! Just come to our office to find out what you won". I'm
sure it's blatantly obvious to HN readers that you haven't won any prize and
instead they'll try to sell you on the vacation package, but this one bothered
me because it fooled my parents. I did eventually get them to stop calling me,
but the contents of those calls aren't exactly HN worthy :/

------
FussyZeus
Anyone who gets a lot of this crap in your phone, I recommend TrueCaller. Been
a lifesaver, gets probably 19/20 of the scam and spam calls (at least for me,
YMMV).

I got one of these WAY back in the day from some doofus saying he was from the
FBI and he was outside my house. Yeah...no cars out there for 2 miles in any
direction, told him he was a bloody idiot and hung up. He actually called back
and tried to get me going again! Gotta give him points for determination.

------
modi15
The call center might be indian, but the guy making most of the money is
always an American. The people making these calls are reading of a script and
entering data into a database. This script and the numbers are provided by an
American client - and some of that is legal outbound marketing also. Looking
at the script, it is non trivial for any agent to know whether it is legal or
not.

------
ggame
More high paying American jobs going overseas :(

In a serious note; I'm from a country where reputation is king and a handshake
seals a deal so I was not used to the shadyness I experienced living in the
US. Homeless people with made up stories, used car salesmen hiding serious
flaw in their cars, hidden charges and fees on services, optional insurance
that isn't optional, worthless employee stock options, bank accounts secretly
opened with forced overdrafts, online universities, kickstarter, financial
services, HMOs, Haitian charities, lobbyists, housing bubble, tech bubble etc.
etc. The point is that the US has plenty of home grown 'scams' and the only
thing happening here is that otherwise marginal scams are profitable enough
for Indias. It's like worrying about losing $100 to muggers on a street while
your pension is being eaten up by fees.

I'm not saying don't worry about the small stuff, what I am saying is that, to
me, I see the US as the mecha of frauds.

~~~
jungletek
>I see the US as the mecha of frauds

Oh god, I'm imagining a fraud-based Gundam now, thanks.

FYI, you want 'Mecca' in this context. A 'mecha' is typically a reference to
giant robots, etc.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecha)

------
callinyouin
Although not a scam like this, my parents were tricked into buying an
"antivirus" product from a phone call from India. The whole thing was a little
bizarre as it wasn't an outright scam. I never got to see the program in
working order but I believe it was an actual attempt at creating a real AV
product, although probably bundled with spy/malware. By the time they asked me
for help their laptop running Windows Vista was riddled startup errors, most
referring to non-existing registry entries. My only guess is that the
"company" or whatever it was hit some sort of kill switch, leaving their
software in a broken state. It took me a while to clean everything up. In the
end I think my parents spent a few hundred dollars on the product and nothing
suspicious ever happened with their bank account.

------
ashark
Relatedly, anyone know how/why the Do Not Call Registry has become totally
useless? I get probably 10+ spam calls a week now, often for business loans
and such (I don't own a business). It's made phone calls the worst way (most
likely to be ignored for a long time, or missed entirely) to get in touch with
me.

Just confirmed, my number's on it and has been since '04\. I get about as many
junk calls as I did pre-registry now, though it worked really well for the
first ~8 years.

~~~
holdenc
Cheap, unregulated IP telephony and disposable phone numbers have made it easy
to spam phones, unfortunately.

~~~
tyingq
Plus the ability to spoof caller ID with almost no chance of being caught.

------
Senji
You should be able to forbid incoming calls from certain countries on your
line. Or international calls at all.

This would be very useful for grandparents. Why isn't this a thing yet?

~~~
dangerboysteve
because VOIP will get around that.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, but it will increase the cost to the scammers and filter out the ones
that can't figure it out.

Possibly have a reroute rather than a block so it's harder to detect. Reroute
the calls to a voice mailbox that essentially saves to /dev/null.

~~~
Senji
Can you reroute to a pay service? So every time they call you they get dinged?

------
Nano2rad
It is surprising US gov does not take this seriously and has not worked with
Indian govt to stop these fraudulent organizations. The main players in the
scam from Ahmedabad has not been caught as per the report. Also I am happy and
slightly worried that the 2 boys who informed trade commission has come out in
the open. It is better to be anonymous when you report such things especially
if you are in India.

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jdfellow
In this podcast the host records a call with one of these IRS scams.

[http://tomwoods.com/ep-729-the-real-story-of-the-epipen-
fias...](http://tomwoods.com/ep-729-the-real-story-of-the-epipen-fiasco-plus-
tom-takes-on-scammers-over-the-phone/)

Starts at 11:58. It's quite entertaining.

------
thinkMOAR
You can safely replace Americans with 'citizens of any non 3rd world country'.

~~~
hobarrera
Nope, it's mostly people in the US that fear their governments like that.

I don't see anyone from Finland, Iceland, or Holand falling for this sort of
thing (language barriers aside), because they don't run around scared of the
government.

~~~
gnufied
It seems scammers are targeting first generation immigrants to US more than
anyone else. Now - as a immigrant myself I can imagine how traumatic it can be
to get call from IRS when you don't know your way around tax system.

Obviously - people on HN are an exception but often times - life of an
immigrant hangs by a thread - "there is an EAD renewal coming up in Feb if it
doesn't get approved (for some reason), you lose your job, lose your home, may
even have to go back to your home country".

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finid
Indian version of the Nigerian 419.

~~~
md2be
What's the India's governments postion on this?

~~~
vthallam
I don't think a govt would have any position on this. The law enforcement
agencies are actively working on tracking and finding out these people which
is how this came into limelight.

