Swindlers' List

With Diwali around the corner, Manish Waale (AGE, RESIDENCE??) needed to figure out how to make some more money, and quickly, when he came across a call centre that promised the sky was the limit on incentives. There were no targets, it was a fixed night shift, and the weekly offs were also fixed. Plus, it was a call centre for international collections, and as anyone familiar with the call centre industry will tell you, these are more prestigious than the domestic ones.

It sounded too good to be true. And it was, as Waale discovered to his horror in early October when a posse of about 200 policemen barged their way into a nondescript building in Penkarpada area in Mira Road in Thane district that housed seven floors (CHECK) of call centres.

"I had joined thinking that i will quit in the month of November after earning good salary and incentives,” Waale told dna. Unfortunately, his dreams of a Diwali with a bulging wallet has now turned into a nightmare. “We have to attend the police stations whenever they contact us,” he says.

The Mira Road call centre scam, perhaps the biggest such in the BPO industry's almost two-decade existence, led to 700 persons being detained and uncovered a sophisticated scheme to bilk US citizens out of money by pretending to be calling from the United States' Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or the US Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS), two of the most feared branches of the federal government.

The Thane police estimate the racket had squeezed as much as Rs 500 crore out of the victims. What's more, the scam had been going on for almost a year, and came to light only after those who had been approached or already badgered into parting with their money complained to the respective departments.

The modus operandi was straightforward.

The call centres would get lists of tax 'defaulters' from their US-based counterparts. The Indian call centre would then call up the victims using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) aka internet-based calls. The calls would threaten them that if they did not pay up the fine amount of $10,000, they would be jailed for two months. The victims were also told that if they failed to make the payment, they would be blacklisted by the department, their driving licenses impounded, and their Social Security Number blocked. Once the victim capitulated, the fraudsters would tell them to make the payment either through Target gift cards or iTunes money transfer system.

The money generated through the fraud would be distributed in a 30:70 ratio between the US and Indian members of the syndicate.

The script typically went like this.

They would first list the three counts under which the victims were being charged: Violation of tax regulation, wilful misrepresentation of information to a government organisation, and theft by deception.

They would then close any legal avenues, saying the victim could no longer approach a tax lawyer or a CPA, and that all government benefits, including the right to work, would be suspended, their bank accounts frozen, a lien taken out on all their assets, and their passports seized.

Needless to say, thousands of US residents fell prey to the threats and shelled out whatever amount they could.

For example, Khusboo Bansal, a resident of Henderson in Las Vegas, told Thane police in an email: “I had received a call from an impostor claiming to be from USCIS on September 19th, the caller claimed to be an immigration officer. The caller did not allow me to consult anyone and put me on call for two consecutive hours and said I have a criminal case pending in India. I was told that I would be arrested or deported. The caller then convinced me to buy 1500 USD iTunes card and share its number.”

Katie Dutcher, a resident of Emeryville in California, also wrote to Thane police stating her friend was duped to the tune of $35000.

Another victim, Madhukar Keer, an engineer in Texas lost $1,00,000 to the fraud.

Life at a bogus call centre

The callers would troop in at 7 p.m. Everyday, put on their headsets and wait for the numbers to call to be put up in the database.

“We were rolling out and speaking to the Americans and we spoke with authority unlike other call centres who managed the customer service of banks and electronic gadgets or from the loan departments of the bank who are soft-spoken (and) who eventually get bullied by the offshore customers,” said says Dinesh Prajapati, a resident of Bhayander who worked at one of the Mira Road call centres.

From pep talk to pressure tactics, the callers had been trained to adopt a voice of gravitas to convince the victims they were from the government.

With a week of training and mock calls, the employees were ready to swoop. And each time they tricked someone into giving up a large amount of money, they would clap.

Ironically, the employees had been instructed during training that recovering money from Americans was their only motto, and referred to themselves in the office as 'Robinhoods' – an act of either extreme animosity towards the first world or an appalling ignorance of the term.

While some joined through word of mouth, others came through their relatives, friends and former colleagues who had eventually entered the scam in the lure of easy money. For some, the routine was simple, having earlier worked with professional call centres.

Terming it exciting, Siddhesh Kulkarni, a resident of Malad says “It was unlike other call centres in which i had to sulk for 12 hours to achieve the targets and not be rewarded despite our hard work.”

“We were having fun as we managed to not only work for the company but for ourselves, too, as we could easily keep track of the money made by us for the company and the incentives which we would get after a month, including the salary package, and that too without any deductions,” he said.

“But Americans are not easy to fool,” recalls Razia Sayyed, “They often abused us on the calls in English, while if we had connected to an Indian based in the US, they often went to the extent of abusing us in Hindi.”

“Every employee attended (to) over hundred callers from which they narrowed down the leads, which would turn into prospects, and later was handed over to the closer to complete the scam,” a crime branch officer said.

The Gujarat connection

The police investigation revealed that the fraudsters had a couple of years ago set up their headquarters in Ahmedabad. It was from there that the first batch of bulk voicemails would be sent out to the victims.

“Blasting of messages meant sending pre-recorded messages on the voicemails of as many as one lakh US citizens at one go,” said deputy commissioner of police, crime, Parag Manere.

The message went like this: “Hi, I am calling from Internal Revenue Services. You are being informed that you have not filed proper returns and have suppressed you income in last few years and an investigation has been initiated against you. This is the last chance given to you. This is a federally monitored call and if you hang up the call it would mean you do not wish to cooperate with the investigative agency and within 30 minutes IRS and local police would come at your door step and place you under arrest.'

This was usually good enough to lure people into calling back the number mentioned in the voicemail, and that is where the call centre's work kicked in.

“When the victims called back, the calls used to land in Ahmedabad and from there the calls were routed to Mira Road,” Manere said. “Here, the receivers of calls used to threaten and extort money impersonating as IRS officials. Victims were asked to buy target cards, send its 16 digit number and then the said number was shared with US counterparts of the syndicate.”

“After having a successful run in Ahmedabad, the masterminds expanded their con to Mira Road and other parts of the country such as Delhi, Haryana, Noida and its nearby areas,” said another officer, who requested anonymity.

Thane police also raided five more call centres in Ahmedabad which were allegedly owned by the same persons who operated the Mira Road ones.

"During investigation, we found out that those running 'call centres' on Mira Road have also invested in Ahmedabad-based call centres. Based on intelligence, we conducted raids at five call centres situated at Pinnacle Business Park in Ahmedabad's Prahlad Nagar on Saturday.," said an officer on condition of anonymity.

But news of the Mira Road raids had already reached Ahmedabad. By the time the police got there, the call centres there shut shop. “Equipment and everything else was removed from each centre of operation,” the office said.

While 72 persons have been arrested in Thane, the masterminds – Sagar Thakkar aka Saggy, Ali, Tapesh, Jimmy and Akhil Singh – are absconding, leaving in their trail thousands of victims, as well as employees they convinced to take part in the scam.

When greed wasn't good

Every employee in the Mira road call centre knew they were conning the Americans but they did not wanted to miss out the opportunity to earn large sums of money. Even the peons earned up to Rs 10,000 a month and were promised increments every six months.

The employees were typically from middle- and lower middle-class families, including women and minor males from across Mira Road, Bhayander, Vasai, Nalasopara and Virar. Lured by the lucrative incentives, some , like 24-year-old ex-Tech Mahindra employee Johnson Dantas, quit jobs in professional call centres to join the scam. Now embroiled in a legal morass, they gather outside the Thane Crime Branch Unit 1 to find out whether they, too, are liable to be arrested.

“We are unaware about our future as we got the job after lot of hardship and I am the only member of the family who earns, as my mother is unwell,” says Sufiyan Majurki,21 a resident of Naya Nagar in Mira Road who has been arrested.

In fact, the fact that he landed the job itself came as a surprise. “He doesn’t even know to speak English properly and we never believed him that he worked for the International call centre,” said his friends who are now trying to get him released. They declined to be named for this article.

Avinash Master, 24, is from a middle class family near Majithiya Park in Rajmata Nagar of Nalasopara East. Among his friends, he quickly became known for his money, which he would splurge on parties or high-end phones. A class,ate of one of the ringleaders, Saggy, Master worked with him in Ahmedabad and was later charged with setting up operations in Mira Road.

His family is now in shock after the turn of events. "We did not knew about the the scam but was only told that he worked for International call centre,” said his brother Abhishek.

The youngest director of the firm, 22-yar-old Dharmesh Solanki, a resident of Nirmal Kunj area at SV Road in Bhayander (East), found out that hard way that short-cuts may lead to a dead-end.

“He discussed about how the firm was functioning well and the employees were able to recover money from the Americans after they were handed over the contract by the US based agencies”, said his family members, who also declined to be named. Solanki, who wanted to do an MBA but could not because of a lack of finances, slipped into his senior role easily, say family members, even discarding his college threads for formal wear to look the part. All it got him, unfortunately, is a prison uniform.