‘India-based call centers allegedly scared their victims and stole their money, including some victims’ entire life savings’
By Kiran N. Kumar
Scams involving robocalls have become a menace with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cracking down on them to stop illicit and foreign robocalls, especially after an open request from Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, as part of a bipartisan group of 51 attorneys general, in January this year.
Robokiller, an app that blocks spam calls and texts, said in its report that on average of 42 spam texts were received by an American in March 2022 and 14 spam calls per person, besides online spam, such as emails and other messages.
Read: US indicts six India-based call centers for phone scams (February 7, 2022)
US came 20th on a list of nations being spammed, according to a report by Truecaller. In 2020, Americans lost more than $520 million through robocall scams.
Most of them are traced to mushrooming Indian call centers, requiring enforcement authorities in both countries to crack down on them in the last one year.
In addition, the Covid-19 has reportedly made many of these robocall centers shut on their own due to the pandemic. But the return to normalcy has again raised the demand for a guard against such call centers.
US authorities have previously prosecuted many Indians and those of Indian descent in relation to these scams. For instance, 21 of them were sentenced in a single case in 2018 and more than 30…
