Assistant police commissioner Bharat Shelke told Reuters the alleged scammers posed as U.S. Internal Revenue Service officials and left victims voicemails accusing them of tax evasion and threatening them with arrest.

"Fearing arrest, some used to call back, and employees at the call center then demanded a few thousand dollars to settle the case," he said. In lieu of cash, employees also accepted alternatives such as numbers from unused iTunes and gift cards.

The 70 people arrested were among more than 700 detained when police raided makeshift call centers - a bungalow, an office building and a shopping center in the Mumbai suburb of Thane - late on Tuesday. Shelke said an estimated $36.5 million was extorted from U.S. residents.

On Thursday, a court granted police custody of all 70, including the owner of one of the call center buildings, until Oct. 10. But police said they have not yet captured the ring leaders of the scheme, which they suspect was run out of the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Authorities say callers were trained to switch their Indian accent for a passable American one. They studied a script six pages long that explained how conversations would develop, with tips on tackling doubts and suspicions.

According to training documents seen by Reuters, if targets asked for permission to speak to an attorney, workers were told to reply (sic): "This would be termed third party discloser, as per the federal law and if you go ahead and do that IRS will have completes right to go ahead discloser to national television, local newspaper and your employer. Moreover, it would be a penalty charges up to 50,000$."

A police official said several of the call center workers were high school graduates who were "very convincing in recorded conversations."

Callers were paid between 10,000 rupees ($150) and 70,000 rupees ($1,050) every month, police said.

An advertisement placed on Aug. 30 by one of the companies raided by police said it was a seeking a "call center executive" to handle calls to the United States and Australia. Experience was not necessary. The salary was described as a "good hike" and the bonus "unlimited."

Tax agencies in countries including the United States, Canada and Australia have all issued warnings over scam callers. Last year, a Pennsylvania man who helped coordinate a fraud in which India-based callers preyed on vulnerable Americans by pretending to be U.S. government agents was sentenced to 14-1/2 years in prison.

Police told the court on Thursday that employees applauded when victims transferred large sums electronically to the call center. "Employees were aware of the fraud, but since they were getting a good salary, they remained silent," Shelke said.

The organizers of the scheme were cautious about paper trails, said another police official, Mukund Hatote. "Workers did not receive employment letters ... and [the organizers] rented office space without paperwork."

The 70 detainees were driven to court in large vans. Most were young men who walked with heads bowed, their faces obscured by a raised hand or a tied kerchief. Inside, the judge heard arguments from about two dozen defense lawyers who insisted their clients were following orders, and that the scheme's masterminds were still at large.

"I got to know we are doing illegal things within a week after joining," one defendant told Reuters as he returned to a police van, "but I saw many getting good performance bonuses. So I didn't leave." </s> Image copyright PA Image caption Police said scammers posed as the officers of the US Internal Revenue Service

Police in the western Indian city of Thane have arrested more than 750 people suspected of defrauding US citizens from a fake call centre.

Officers say the suspects obtained lists of US tax defaulters and used threats to obtain their bank details.

The scam is said to have netted more than $150,000 (£118,000) a day, making it one of the biggest frauds in India's history.

Thane police officials said they were contacting the FBI to ask for help.

Some 70 of those detained were formally arrested, police said, with the rest released pending further inquiries. Nine people believed to have led the scam have been identified.

The scammers pretended to be members of the US Internal Revenue Service, and told victims they owed back taxes.

In some cases, the victims were duped into buying gift vouchers from different companies and bullied into revealing voucher ID numbers, police said.

The scammers then made purchases with the voucher numbers.

Police say those involved in the scam at the Indian end retained 70% of the earnings, with 30% going to their US collaborators.

Paramvir Singh, the police commissioner of Thane, told reporters that 851 hard disks, high-end servers, and other electronic equipment had been seized.

Mr Singh said overnight raids on Wednesday had lasted well into the morning, and involved more than 200 policemen who had raided buildings in three locations in the city.

Thane police superintendent Mahesh Patil told BBC Hindi that the investigation could open up cases from other countries as well.

A US State Department official said: "We have seen reports and are following the situation closely to confirm any US citizen involvement. We would refer you to the local Indian authorities for further details on the case." </s> Posing as IRS agents, the telecallers duped many Americans into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’

The Thane police have busted a racket in which telecallers were calling up American citizens posing as agents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and duping them into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’. The police have arrested 70 accused in the case, while 700 are still under the scanner.

According to police officials, acting on a tip-off, a team of 40 officers and 120 constables conducted raids on three buildings on Mira Road, from which the racket was allegedly being run.

“Telephonic conversations via Voice Over Internet Protocol [VOIP] facility were being made when we raided the three places and we also found recordings of calls made to U.S. citizens in these spaces, which were being run like call centres.”

“A total of 772 people were taken into custody for inquiries,” said Thane Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.

Explaining the modus operandi of the accused, Mr. Singh said the accused obtained contact details of U.S. citizens in bulk from gangs that illegally sell such information. “The callers would call the targets and claim to be from the IRS. They would then tell the targets that some irregularities had been detected in their tax payments, that they had become defaulters, that they would be booked and would face imprisonment for at least three months. Once a target believed them, the callers would start talking about payment of fines. After an amount agreeable to both parties was reached at, the targets would be asked to pay via international gift cards or iTunes,” Mr. Singh said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Parag Manere added, “Eight out of ten times, the targets would not believe the callers and hang up. But even if only a handful of people paid the ‘fines’ every day, the accused were still making thousands of dollars from each target.”

According to inquiries so far, the racket has been active for around a year, and the accused are believed to have cheated thousands of U.S. citizens to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees. The police are still trying to get an estimate of the amount of money that the accused have made till date.

After preliminary inquiries, the police identified 70 of the detained suspects who were heading the racket and placed them under arrest, while the rest are still being questioned. The accused have been booked under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act, and the police have seized hard drives and computers, which will now be examined to get a more accurate sense of the extent of the racket.

Officials said a large number of other suspects were young men and women who were trained in American accent and legal terms before being put to work. The police have also launched a separate investigation into the source of the contact details of the targets. </s> WASHINGTON: More than 250 people were charged in a major U.S. crackdown on elder fraud scams that victimized over 1 million people and led to US$500 million in losses, the Justice Department announced on Thursday.

The scams included the use of mass mailing, telemarketing and investment frauds as well as identity theft and theft by guardians, the department said in a statement announcing the criminal and civil charges.

Some of the schemes included scams where people were falsely told they had won a lottery but had to pre-pay a fee or taxes, while in other scams a senior was told a grandchild had been arrested and needed money for bail, the department said.

Globally, 200 defendants were charged criminally and another 50 face civil or other charges, the department said.

"Today is only the beginning. I have directed department prosecutors to coordinate with both domestic law enforcement partners and foreign counterparts to stop these criminals from exploiting our seniors," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

The sweep was carried out by the Justice Department, FBI, Federal Trade Commission and the Iowa and Kansas attorneys general, among others. </s> Losses stemming from these plots are estimated at more than $500 million.

Criminal charges are filed against more than 250 alleged perpetrators in mailing, telemarketing schemes.

The Justice Department announced a broad enforcement sweep targeting financial fraud against the elderly, resulting in charges filed against more than 250 defendants. "Today's actions send a clear message: We will hold perpetrators of elder fraud schemes accountable wherever they are," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in announcing the charges Thursday. The DOJ coordinated with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, in building the cases. The perpetrators allegedly used mass mailing and telemarketing to rip off seniors, as well as identity theft and financial abuse by guardians.

In 2015, individuals made 1,108 calls to the Senate Aging Committee's toll-free fraud hotline. That number more than doubled to 2,282 in 2016. "By bringing cases against these scammers, we send a strong message to other con artists that we will not stand by and allow older Americans to be victimized," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a ranking member of the Senate Aging Committee.

Phony winners

More than a million people, most of whom were elderly, were victimized, according to the Justice Department. In one case, the FTC and the state of Missouri filed charges against two men and their sweepstakes organization. The FTC alleged that seniors would receive mailers claiming that they had just won more than $1 million or that they could win a large cash prize if they answered a question and submited a registration fee. Since 2013, victims lost more than $110 million to this scheme, the FTC said. In another case, the FTC and the state of Missouri pursued defendants who allegedly coordinated with telemarketers to hoodwink the elderly into buying phony tech support services. Some victims of this scheme lost more than $50,000 paying for fake security software. One person paid nearly $400,000 over several years, according to the FTC.

Spotting a ripoff

People who are targets of a sweepstakes scheme get a call, card or an email telling them that they've won a prize, but they'll need to pay a fee or "taxes" in order to pick up their winnings. A legitimate sweepstakes would never ask you to wire money or force you to pay a fee in order to claim your prize. Real offers will also tell you the terms and conditions, including the rules of the contest, according to the FTC. See below for details from the FTC on how to spot and avoid a tech support scam.

Targeting retirees

Older Americans are losing about $36.5 billion each year to elder financial abuse, according to 2015 data from True Link Financial. Meanwhile, 3 in 10 state securities regulators report seeing an increase in senior financial fraud, according to data from the North American Securities Administrators Association. See below for examples of fraud schemes targeting the elderly. </s> The Justice Department announced a broad enforcement sweep targeting financial fraud against the elderly, resulting in charges filed against more than 250 defendants.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the charges during a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

Justice coordinated with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, in building the cases.

The perpetrators allegedly used mass mailing and telemarketing to rip off seniors, as well as individual incidences of identity theft and financial abuse by guardians.

"Today's actions send a clear message: We will hold perpetrators of elder fraud schemes accountable wherever they are," said Sessions. </s> Two young men were beaten to death in India on Saturday after residents suspected they were child kidnappers, the BBC and Aljazeera report. The men, Nilotpal Das, a 29-year-old audio engineer and Abijeet Nath, a 30-year-old digital artist, reportedly stopped in a remote village to ask for directions, but were attacked by a mob that believed them to be child traffickers.

At least 18 people have been arrested following the attack, a video of which went viral over the weekend. According to BBC, locals began attacking people who they don’t recognize or who don’t speak their language after a video spread on WhatsApp warning people of child abductors. The video is reportedly edited from a Pakistani child safety awareness film and cautions viewers that there are people coming to their city to kidnap children. The misinformation was also shared on local media networks.

What’s more, photos of dead children have also been shared through text messaging, according to Hyderabad deputy commissioner of police V. Satyanarayana. “These mischief mongers are intentionally circulating such messages to create panic in the minds of the public,” Satyanarayana told CNN.

Over the last two years, more than ten violent mob attacks have occurred around India as a result of misinformation spread on social media, according to Al Jazeera.

The Assam government has reportedly launched “special unit for cyber monitoring ” to curb the circulation of such rumors. And on Monday, the Hyderabad City Police posted a warning on Facebook, noting that people are spreading child abduction rumors on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. “Whereas such acts of spreading rumours by the aforesaid miscreants by using social media are causing a lot of disturbance to the public order of the Society and creating a serious threat to the lives of innocent persons,” the police force wrote.

WhatsApp is a crucial political tool in India, where the Facebook-owned service has about 250 million users. And while it serves as an important platform for activists, especially around elections, it has also served as a dangerous vehicle for rapidly distributing fake news. And, as is evident in the growing number of lynchings in the country, these misinformation campaigns can be deadly. </s> Police in India have a bad reputation for extortion and bribery, but in a first, the policemen have gone rather tech-savvy in their approach — they are ditching fiat for Bitcoin.

Eight policemen have been arrested by the criminal investigation department (CID) in the Indian state of Gujarat for allegedly extorting 200 BTC from a businessmen, reported Indian national daily Hindustan Times.

Shailesh Bhatt, a local businessman, had filed a complaint against the policemen alleging abduction and extortion. The accused comprised three more people other than the policemen including a lawyer and an ‘agent’, who acted as a fixer between the policemen and the businessman.

Following the complaint, two of the accused policemen have already been arrested while the rest have gone underground, said the Director General (DG) of the Gujarat CID.

According to the DG, the accused policemen had called the businessman to Gandhinagar (Gujarat’s capital) on February 11, where they abducted him and took him to a farmhouse. This is when the accused policemen purportedly forced Bhatt to transfer 200 BTC to an unidentified account.

The policemen released Bhatt the same day after he promised to give them an addition 320 million Indian rupees through hawala, the DG told Indian media. He also added that the CID had so far not found any proof of Bitcoin transfer but has found evidence for abduction, illegal confinement, threats and the ransom demand.

The DG also speculated that Bhatt may have been targeted by the policemen because of a complaint they had received against him for allegedly stealing Bitcoins from someone himself.

While there have been many cases of BTC extortions across the world, this might just be the first that involved the police as accused.

This is not the first time law enforcement has been implicated in stealing cryptocurrency. In 2015, two former federal agents were charged with stealing Bitcoin during the Silk Road probe.

Cryptocurrencies have been running a lot of bad news in India recently. Bharadwaj brothers, the owners of ‘India’s first Bitcoin mining business’, were just arrested last week for running a scam of $300 million, after constant complaints against them since 2015.

The reserve bank of India has also issued a directive against Indian banks to indulge with any cryptocurrency-related business — although there’re no legal repercussions levied on anyone yet. </s> MOBILE USERS, CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL VIDEO

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Trump administration says it is cracking down on scams that target elderly people.

Attorney General Sessions said Thursday that last month, cases were filed against 40 people for scamming about 1 million victims.

He also called for more awareness about Ponzi schemes, lottery scams, and people pretending to be with the IRS.

“We need to spread the word about this, so please, if you or someone you know was victimized by an elder fraud scheme, report it to the Federal Trade Commission,” Sessions said. “We will be following up on those reports.”

The attorney general said more than 200 people have been charged in elder fraud schemes.

The suspects are accused of stealing from more than 1 million Americans of more than $500 million.

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Police in the western Indian city of Thane arrest more than 750 people suspected of defrauding U.S. citizens from a fake call center.