In a first such instance, a U.S. citizen has filed a complaint with the Ahmedabad police, alleging that he was duped of $17,000 by a city-based illegal call centre executives, who impersonated as officials of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), equivalent to the Income Tax department in India.
Tax dispute
In his compliant to city police commissioner A.K. Singh, the complainant said that he had received a series of calls on his mobile, demanding payment to settle an old tax dispute.
“We have been vigilant on illegal call centres in the city. In the last six months, the city police have busted around half a dozen such call centres and arrested over 75 people,” a senior police officer told The Hindu , adding, “In case of the American complainant, we sought details from him to launch a probe.”
Recently, U.S.-based Gujarati Harsh Patel pleaded guilty in a U.S. court for being part of an IRS scam involving call centres in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. In last October, the Thane police had busted a call centre racket involving 26-year-old Sagar Thakkar alias Shaggy, mastermind of the $300 million scam.
