America
Two US lawmakers urge India to take action against phone fraud
New York, June 13
Two US lawmakers have urged
India to take action against telephone scammers who they said defraud
millions of Americans. Their appeal came after they proposed tough
legislation to combat widespread fraud by foreigners that hijacks caller
IDs.
"We think that all governments should crack down on
scammers, fraudsters and bad actors -- including India," Representative
Leonard Lance of New Jersey said in a statement to IANS this week.
Another
cosponsor of the anti-fraud bill, Representative Grace Meng of New
York, said, "As we push for it to become law, we urge law enforcement
agencies -- where these scams are occurring and originating -- to do all
they can to combat it."
The call for action in India by Meng and
Lance is significant because many of the frauds originate in India or
use Indians and they could erode the credibility of India's $118 billion
back office sector.
The bill the two Democrats have cosponsored
with Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas seeks tougher action
by the US against telephone scams knows as "caller ID spoofing."
In
these frauds, the criminals make it appear that they are calling from a
government agency, bank, police department, credit card or technology
company, pharmacy or hospital by having those numbers appear on the
victim's phone. The scammers then make fraudulent claims and ask for and
often receive money or the person's personal or financial information,
which they use to commit more fraud.
Their bill proposing the
Anti-Spoofing Act of 2015 would strengthen the Truth in Caller ID Act by
prohibiting spoofing by foreigners, and target new Internet-based Voice
over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services and text messaging used in
frauds, the Representatives said earlier when they announced it.
"The
problem of caller ID spoofing has gotten out of control," the lawmakers
said. "Millions of Americans continue to get ripped off by con artists
and scammers who perpetrate this despicable crime, many losing thousands
of dollars. "
Last year, Microsoft filed a suit in a Federal
court in California against C-Cubed Solutions Private Limited based in
India, accusing it of pretending to be from Microsoft and cheating
people into paying for nonexistent services, stealing their financial
information for further fraud and planting viruses.
The
lawmakers, whose constituencies include many Indian Americans, noted
that the fraud affects "particularly the South Asian community."
Law
enforcement officials in several places, including New Jersey and
California, have issued alerts specifically warning the Indian American
and South Asian communities about these frauds after discovering victims
among them.
A syndicated Indian American columnist Rekha Basu
exposed in a Des Moines Regsiter column last year one such common fraud.
The caller identified himself as a tax officer named "Ian Morgan" and
claimed that she had misreported her income and now owed taxes. But she
detected an Indian accent and heard people talking in Hindi in the
background, she reported.
When Basu identified herself as a
journalist, "Morgan" admitted that he was not working for the tax
department. Basu wrote, "He said he's Indian, in the final semester of
his MBA, and earns $50,000 a month this way."
Police in Fremont,
California, described to The San Jose Mercury how the fraud cheated some
Indians: Using a number showing Washington's 202 area code, the
criminals claim to be from the tax service and demand money, threatening
to revoke their visa or passport. To make the payment, they ask them to
get money order cash cards and give the number code so they could
collect the money.