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Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#171

Post by dymk »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #107
weakfortress wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police in India are paid off to allow this. Indeed, the best solution would be economic sanctions on India until it is resolved.

That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing. I also don't think the US has jurisdiction there, so I'd much rather see an investment in education or public infrastructure to help with it. If this was similar to the Russia stuff where the goal was to affect the election and was sponsored by the govt then sanctions kinda make sense, but this is a problem of international communi…

> That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing.

It's the responsibility of the Indian government to police what happens within its borders. The Indian government has turned blind eye to scammers in their country targeting the US, they're effectively endorsing it.

Why should the US continue to do business with a country that leeches off of the US citizenry?

Historically, the US has done the same thing to Japan, and more recently, China, when their businesses undermine US businesses. Either by not respecting US IP or by running US businesses under through collusion.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#172

Post by rockyj »

debarshri wrote: post #112

It is not just Americans who affected by these scams. It is also Indian elderly population too who are affected by these scams. I think Indian authorities are very slow to react to these issues because police dont really understand the impact these calls make. Also they are paid off and are often of part of the mafia that runs them. My parent's friends have also been scammed. The Netflix series "Jamtara" really shows…

Exactly. At one level, the Indian political system is a politician-criminal nexus. The politicians are supported by money flowing in from shady systems, the politicians allow shady systems to run and use the money to win elections. Rinse and repeat.

Then there are some variations of these - e.g. the politician and criminal is the same person or in the same family, the criminal also does some legit work, the criminal does mostly legit work and lot of it is goverment projects or projects running on tax money (which are done badly or subcontracted and money flows back partly as kick-backs).

This cycle is hard to break unless some serious reforms are brought it, but then why would the politicians break the very system which brings them so much power and money.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#173

Post by jacquesm »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #135
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telco's could put a stop to this if they really wanted to. Start with disabling number spoofing for international calls, if the number presented isn't in the country of origin then reject the connection request. Another choke point is the gift card system.

No they can't. The scammers will just hire a random person from indeed/monster/whatever, ship them a SIM box and tell them to fill it with prepaids.

You tackle these things one-obstacle-at-the-time. Telco's are borderline complicit in this today, they don't have to be. Note that in some countries these scams are far more prevalent than in others, they'll go for the low hanging fruit first just like any other business. Make it harder and definitely there will be a response and then you aim to tackle that one. Shipping a SIM box would already be much more work than just changing a number in a database. Require that a phone number is used in the country of origin before you allow it to roam is another step in that process and so on. Rome wasn't built in a day and I'm sure that getting rid of this problem is going to be a series of steps.

But as long as telcos willingly cooperate and allow remote call centers to basically pick any number in the locality of the recipient even though that number is not currently roaming in India they are making things much worse.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#174

Post by AdityaSanthosh »

weakfortress wrote: post #61
balls187 wrote: post #13

To temper the potential for anti-indian rhetoric, US authorities work side by side with local Indian authorities to shut these down. Mark Rober has a few videos dedicated to going after several of these scam call centers, and most recently 3 major ones were shut down and their owners arrested.

"Anti-Indian rhetoric"? The scams literally originate in India, and are masterminded by Indians. Further, the police are often paid off and rarely do anything about it. When enough fuss is caused about one or two they stop them and then another two crop up somewhere else. If you study the history of organized crime, especially in America, this mirrors the Italian mob once they got control of the police. This is organ…

[flagged]

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#175

Post by kube-system »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #78

It's mind-boggling that the United States allows this kind of thing to happen. In the EU I get maybe one spam call every couple of months. From the stories you hear from Americans on HN, Americans get multiple spam/scam calls a day, and the vast majority of their inbound calls are spam/scams. What is going wrong in the US that isn't going wrong in the EU? Language barrier? Regulatory capture?

The US just has large number of people in one country code who mostly speak English, have high incomes, a uniform retail landscape ("go to CVS and get a Google Play card" works everywhere), and an abundance of options for telephony.

It's not like Indian scammers are beholden to EU law but not US law.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#176

Post by TeMPOraL »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #67
phaedrus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just accept the collateral damage of never answering calls. Traditional telephone service is dead to anyone under 40.

This. Snail mail is so overloaded with spam it might as well be the same. The fact two fundamental and official mass communication channels are functionally useless is a sign of the rot in our country. Email is teetering on the void. Chat is balkanized and siloed, same with social media, unlike telephony there is no source monopoly or tradition of cross standards. Txt is the last bastion. It'll die in the next decade…

> The fact two fundamental and official mass communication channels are functionally useless is a sign of the rot in our country.

It's a problem everywhere. This is what you get when you let the advertising industry operate unchecked. Scam calls and snail mail spam are just piggybacking on the fact that phone companies and postal services encourage and make money on telemarketing and mass marketing e-mails.

It's going to be hard to solve one without solving the other, as the difference between those scams and typical marketing communication is a matter of degree, not kind.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#177

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

weakfortress wrote: post #165
e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing. I also don't think the US has jurisdiction there, so I'd much rather see an investment in education or public infrastructure to help with it. If this was similar to the Russia stuff where the goal was to affect the election and was sponsored by the govt then sanctions kinda make sense, but this is a problem of international communi…

[flagged]

I think this is an "ought VS is" thing - I know realistically the US could just hit people until they agree, but this is something that would need to be handled by an international governing body. If someone in NY scams someone in CA, CA can't just unilaterally prosecute them, it becomes a federal crime because it's across state lines. Similarly this is between countries and I don't know if we even have international laws for stuff like this, so it may not even be truly illegal. The US could request extradition but I think that's the extent of the legal actions the government could take.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#178

Post by josephcsible »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #135
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telco's could put a stop to this if they really wanted to. Start with disabling number spoofing for international calls, if the number presented isn't in the country of origin then reject the connection request. Another choke point is the gift card system.

No they can't. The scammers will just hire a random person from indeed/monster/whatever, ship them a SIM box and tell them to fill it with prepaids.

Couldn't this be fixed by restricting international roaming of US SIMs into countries with high rates of call scams?

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#179

Post by bayesian_horse »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #78

It's mind-boggling that the United States allows this kind of thing to happen. In the EU I get maybe one spam call every couple of months. From the stories you hear from Americans on HN, Americans get multiple spam/scam calls a day, and the vast majority of their inbound calls are spam/scams. What is going wrong in the US that isn't going wrong in the EU? Language barrier? Regulatory capture?

In Germany scam calls often come from callcenters in Turkey. There is a huge quantity of people who speak both Turkish and German quite well and a small portion of them who for some reason or other reside in Turkey now participate in scam operations.

Turkey doesn't have much interest in stopping this. One could argue they have quite a few bigger problems, crime related or not, to try and shut down a source of foreign currency. Same as India.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#180

Post by dragonwriter »

woodruffw wrote: post #39
jjeaff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10 Billion is not just a few scammers. That is an unfathomably huge industry.

I can certainly fathom $10 billion. But I take your point; my point was that, even if there are a million criminals involved in telephone fraud in India, it's a tiny fraction of overall (and primarily legitimate!) telephone traffic. Interfering with over a billion peoples' ability to talk with their loved ones requires existential damage to our country, not frustrating crime that's best resolved with international co…

> I think a generally useful framing for these kinds of criminal enterprises is comparison to US wage theft: nearly the same amount is stolen from US workers each year in just the top 10 states[1]. This doesn’t somehow excuse phone fraud, but you don’t see the same kind of grousing for cutting Fortune 500s off of the Internet.

Cutting F500s off the internet would do nothing about wage theft. There is considerable advocacy for strong action to bring wage theft under control, too. So, I’d say this analogy fails its purpose on multiple levels.

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