How Do Indian Scam Call Centers Work?

Indian scam call centers steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting people all over the world every year and they have a ton of different ways of earning your trust sometimes they pretend they're the IRS threatening you with literal jail time if you don't send money immediately other times they'll pretend to be someone trying to give you money these companies are well known by the Indian government as

well as police forces and governments around the globe yet they continue to steal somewhere around seventy thousand dollars every day from unsuspecting victims I decided I'd dive in and find out more if you're one of the 60 million people who've been scammed out of money within the last year the odds are decent your scammer originated in India and in particular the city of Kolkata that's because

there are several companies based there that have quickly become the leaders in this 20 billion dollar industry and while you might be familiar with some of the scams I'm looking at you Nigerian prince trying to give us money you might not know about the huge operations happening in Indian call center they utilize a combo of phone contact with online deception to build innocent people out of

their cash their savings and TBH their faith in humanity and worst of all these call centers focus on people over 65 because they know that crowd is less internet Savvy and more prone to fall for people calling them about official issues but to be clear the scammers are more than happy to steal money from people of any age so don't think you're in the clear if

you're not entering retirement age my people so let's get into how the scams work there are a few flavors of Indian call center scams but they all rely on pretending to be a legit company or someone from the government in a nutshell they gain the Mark's trust over the phone and end up convincing them to provide info like their bank account number or their social security

number one of the most popular scams that Indian call centers use is to pretend to be the IRS or whatever entity handles taxation in countries outside the U.S in this case the scammers tend to go the Straight Ahead route of calling people directly that's likely due to the supposed severity of the problem that they're pretending to be calling about this scammer will say they're with the

IRS and inform the person they owe back taxes they not only inform the person of their debt they threaten to arrest them if they don't pay and pay now so the people being targeted will often start sweating buckets and give whatever info this scammer is asking for the scammers even claim to physically be holding a warrant for the person's arrest in their hands they say they

can go to court or pay a fine of seventy five thousand dollars or do an out-of-court settlement right then not surprisingly most people opt for the third one and what's Wild is that sometimes people are so flustered they don't even think it's weird when the scammers tell them they can pay by sending prepaid debit cards and gift cards so before you go ahead and choose that

third option remember the following advice direct from the IRS the IRS doesn't ever ask to be paid via gift cards and prepaid debit cards they don't even ask for wire transfers another common request from the scammers frankly if you're going to hear from the IRS it's going to be through the Postal Service they also don't threaten to bring in the authorities to have you arrested after

calling you mainly because there's always some sort of appeals process you can choose to make sure you actually do owe them the Indian call center scammers do a similar grift with social security numbers where they claim to be from the government and they tell the victim their SSN was used in a crime like the IRS scam they convince the person they're facing a rest and they

have the option of paying an immediate fine to avoid trouble again they often ask to be paid in untraceable and non-reversible payment Styles like gift cards although you know it's not a scam subscribing to our Channel just saying another method involves actually getting people to dive into their own bank account online there's one variation where victims receive a call but it's way more positive sounding than

the IRS or the social security number calls the scammers make it seem like the person is eligible for a loan AKA hey we want to give you some money let's party then the grift goes one of two ways sometime times they insist the victim prove they'll be able to pay the loan back by sending a little money up front in that case it's similar to the

other scams but other times they're a little trickier they'll make it appear as if they've literally put money into the victim's bank account then ask them to send some of that amount back via gift cards Etc but in reality no money has actually been put into their account so any money they withdraw and send is just their own money other scams are more subtle and more

vicious sometimes they'll send a victim an email pretending to be a major retailer like Amazon the email will be confirming a purchase one that the person obviously didn't make but don't worry little scam victim all is not lost there's a number you can call to dispute the charge yeah so you'll probably see where this is going the number is fake and it just goes to the

call center so already the person has an extra layer of trust because after all they're the ones who called not the scammer so the scammer builds even more trust by going along with the person's insistence that they didn't buy anything we'll get you a refund no problem they'll tell them victim they'll send the person to some website where the person will enter their own bank account

info as well as the amount they're going to be refunded but then after they hit the submit button the scammer will add a few zeros to the amount like in this video showing a scammer in the middle of stealing twenty thousand dollars from a nice old lady named Bessie she enters 200 bucks but then that number is suddenly twenty thousand and the scammer shows her a

faked page that looks exactly like her real online bank so now Bessie is guilted into going to her real Bank withdrawing the extra money and sending it to the scammer and she's really just withdrawing her own money scammers have a variety of personas they use depending on the type of scam they're running sometimes they're super imposing and mean like the IRS scam other times like with

that lady Bessie they act Meek and friendly they play on the kindness of their victims by pretending to be their friends or pretending that if the victim doesn't send money the scammer's family will suffer but in reality these calls are coming from giant rooms full of computers and phones staffed by cold-hearted experts who have been trained how to manipulate and steal there are a number of

people and groups who've made it their mission to prank disrupt and generally mess with these scammers people like Mark Rober have been able to infiltrate the call centers and do things like release cockroaches stink bombs and more not exactly stuff that'll bring the call centers down but he's managed to shut a few down for a few days which ultimately means a couple million dollars of lost

revenue for them then there are the guys at Trilogy media who were able to get access to a scammer's phones and computers and basically catch them in the ACT but these guys are mostly doing it to cause a little Mayhem in the lives of the scammers and to raise awareness of them by having their content go viral all of which is admirable and hopefully it raises

awareness but you might be wondering why these call centers are still around if the U.S and Indian governments know they're stealing thousands of dollars each day the truth is there's not much the US Government Can Do Beyond trying to secure indictments of some of the known own players in the scams and hope the Indian government will assist in turning them over and in India it seems

like the local and Regional Police just kind of don't want to be bothered and that's despite the fact that like 99 of the Indian people also hate these scammers and lose millions of dollars to them every year the Federal Trade Commission put out guidelines to help everyone recognize the signs one of the major signs is they often pretend to be a well-known organization like the IRS

or Amazon and usually Pretend There's either a prize or a problem AKA you're in trouble and you'll be in more trouble if you don't pay or you have money coming your way but need to pay a little upfront to get it another sign is urgency since the scammers rely on the intensity of an act now situation they'll usually insist if you don't take care of the

issue immediately it's going to be a huge headache for you and the other major sign is instructing you to pay in well a kind of weird way like wouldn't you expect the IRS to ask for a check or credit card payments all things equal it's kind of weird the government would ask you to send them a gift card hard to Target like they were your nephew

about to start fourth grade but they say Sunshine is the best disinfectant and when it comes to Indian scam call centers that Sunshine is spreading the word about them to anyone you know and being on the lookout for signs of a scam it's also a good idea to filter out unwanted texts and block calls from numbers you don't know but even if you get on the

phone with someone who might be a scammer remember no government or corporate entity is just going to hit you up for money ask for your personal info and then ask you for prepaid gift cards so don't take that bait but the same is true with emails and tax from numbers and addresses you don't know never click on the links from those texts and emails and don't

even call the numbers that they List look up official numbers on your own and only visit websites you know are legit resist that little voice inside your head telling you to act quickly just because someone's asking you to there's time to figure this out deep breaths you guys and obviously never just send money in any form to anyone until you know exactly who it's going to

and why sometimes the best thing to do is to reach out to a trusted family member or friend we all sometimes resist this because TBH it's embarrassing to ask someone if you're really being hunted by the government or if it's possible you want to sweepstakes but you don't want to take the money but usually your friends and fam can help you talk it out and you're

more likely to realize when you're getting scammed and finally when you think you're being scammed report it to the FTC they're probably not going to go all SEAL Team Six and bust down doors across the globe but it can help them build a case for down the line okay I'm gonna go check on my grandma to make sure she didn't send my birthday check to an

Indian scammer if you have stories of call center scams pop them in the comments