THANE, India — Nearly an hour into the phone call, the woman began to get suspicious.
The man on the line said he was with the Internal Revenue Service and that she owed a penalty for tax fraud. But to make the payment, he told her to drive to a nearby Food 4 Less grocery store in suburban San Diego and purchase an iTunes gift card.
Twice he said she owed “1,000 rupees,” before correcting himself to say $1,000.
Even the name he gave, Daniel Parker, seemed odd. He spoke with a foreign accent and mangled basic phrases.
“Your name is Daniel Parker? Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yeah, ma’am,” he replied. “I am sure.”
But it was too late. The National City, Calif., woman had already shared an iTunes card number worth $500 — becoming one of tens of thousands of Americans drawn in by an extensive, years-long scam in which callers from India pose as IRS agents to extort money.
Indian call centers have built a reputation for handling customer service and tech support inquiries for major U.S. companies. But in recent years, investigators in the United States, Canada, Britain and other countries have traced several organized phone frauds — involving callers posing as computer technicians, debt collectors, immigration officials or tax agents — to Indian call centers.
In recent years, investigators in the United States, Canada, Britain and other countries have traced several organized phone frauds — involving callers posing as computer technicians, debt collectors, immigration officials or tax agents — to Indian call centers.
On the surface, little sets the illicit call centers apart from legitimate ones. They operate almost in the open, using the same corporate-style office spaces and recruiting from the same vast pool of English-speaking college graduates — allowing the crimes to persist for years.
This year, the Federal Trade Commission described Indian call centers as “the source of various impostor frauds that have reached consumers throughout the English-speaking world.”
Last month, police in the northern Mumbai suburb of Thane raided three office buildings suspected of being used to make the fraudulent IRS calls and rounded up more than 700 people for questioning. At least 70 remain behind bars as investigators have expanded the inquiry to include dozens of call centers in multiple Indian states.
Weeks later, the Justice Department announced the indictments of nearly 60 people in India and the United States for involvement in shady call centers that had conned more than 15,000 Americans out of hundreds of millions of dollars since 2012.
Among those indicted for conspiracy, fraud and money laundering is the suspected ringleader of the Thane operation — Sagar Thakkar, also known as Shaggy, who is believed to have fled India as police closed in on his business.
The scheme — part of what the IRS described in 2014 as the largest phone fraud to target Americans— has exposed a dark side of India’s $30 billion call-center industry.
“It has blighted the image of India,” said Parag Manere, deputy police commissioner in Thane. “Someone who does this kind of thing, they will not be tolerated.”