Eight Individuals Arrested for Fraud in IRS Phone Scams

I've said the same thing when they call me you're not with the IRS cuz one they will never call you and two the person has a thick heavy accent that sounds like their from the middle East or India! They can't keep doing this scam forever, esp when the IRS knows. And 8 people have already been arrested!

8 people out of what?  1000's?  10's of thousands?  100's of thousands?  India is a country with over a billion people in it so those figures are not outlandish, and there are literally thousands of call centers operating all different types of scams over there.  The one the busted in India had over 700 people calling, and that was simply one call center.

Drop in the bucket!!! How much you wanna bet, this trash will conduct seminars in Prison how to defraud stupid people in this country using simple phones. I guarantee you, there will be MORE similar scamsters out-there ( educated in prison) in a few years.

Rather than start a new thread, I’m posting the results from a similar Justice Department litigation here as an update to the topic of IRS phone scams…

Excerpted from today’s New York Times: U.S. Breaks Up Fake I.R.S. Phone Scam Operation

The Justice Department says it has broken up what appeared to be the nation’s first large-scale, multinational telephone fraud operation.

With stiff sentences for 21 conspirators in the United States, and 32 contractors in India, involving five call centers in Ahmedabad (a city in western India) … have been indicted on wire fraud, money laundering, and other conspiracy charges as part of the operation.

Over four years, more than 15,000 victims in the United States lost “hundreds of millions” of dollars to the sophisticated scam, and more than 50,000 individuals had their personal information misused, the department said. The money was routed through call centers in India back to the ringleaders in eight states.

A person posing as an Internal Revenue Service or immigration official was on the phone, threatening arrest, deportation or other penalties if the victims did not immediately pay their debts with prepaid cards or wire transfers.

The calls targeted the most vulnerable Americans, including immigrants and older people.

They chose their victims through information obtained from “data brokers” or from other sources, the Justice Department said.

Read the full article here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-breaks-u ... tion/ar-BBL0jmj

Even as this story broke in the NY Times, people were reporting these scam calls still coming in.  Sad.
Thanks for posting.

I read where they were ordered to pay restitution of $9 million.  Their assets were frozen and confiscated which included gold bars, silver bars, thousands and thousands in prepaid cards and cash.

The scammers...seemingly...have branched out. Now...instead of misrepresenting the IRS...they are claiming to be from Social Security. The same story, just a different branch of the Government. The scammers are utilizing VoIP services and spoofing VoIP telephone numbers to boot.

You are probably right. If there is 1 person that is the mastermind of the whole deal, that person will be granted immunity long enough to throw everyone else under the bus then disappear, from that life, having his record cleared,  as if his skills came from College, to work for the government getting paid high dollar bc he is the only person with a job title that was made for him. Of course he will be given a super nice vehicle and have a super nice furnished place to live. Unlike all his "running buddies!"