US Extradites Alleged Indian Scamster To Disrupt ‘India-Based Call Centre Scam Industry’

Aiming at dismantling the “India-based call centre scam industry”, United States government recently extradited an Indian citizen from Singapore for his alleged involvement in multi-million dollar racket, reports Hindustan Times.

Hitesh Madhubhai Patel, 42, is facing charges of cheating millions of dollars from the Americans, using people in call centers and impersonating them as US government officials, said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski while announcing the extradition.

Benczkowski also warned of global action against all the fraudulent owners, managers and employees of overseas call centres.

Patel was arrested at the request of the US in Singapore when arrived there from India on 21 September 2018, at the request of the US, and Singapore Law Minister K. Shanmugam issued a warrant on March 25 to hand him over to America, the Justice Department said.

Patel, along with 55 people and five companies, was charged in 2016 over an alleged scam.

According to the chargesheet, India-based call centres allegedly impersonated tax or immigration officials and called people in the US and threatened them with arrest or deportation if they did not pay what they claimed were back taxes or fines.

When their victims agreed to pay, the people at the call centres arranged for payments to be collected in the form of store cards or wire transfers by their co-conspirators in the US, who cashed them often using stolen identities and laundered the money .

They even offered people fake loans and collected fees for the lending that never materialised.