When the 58-year-old fraud victim told investigators in Maryland the details of how she had been duped out of $1.7 million, they knew she was hardly alone.
A year-long, expanding investigation — the results of which were made public Monday — revealed just how widespread her plight was: more than 650 victims, targeted by the same three call centers in India and losing over $48 million. The fraudsters posed as tech support workers, allowing them to gain access to victims’ computers, or described themselves as American law enforcement as part of elaborate ruses.
“A staggering amount of money,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul, head of the bureau’s Baltimore field office. “It’s infuriating and it’s unfair.”
The probe led authorities in India to raid the call centers on Dec. 11 and 12, Paul said. Those operations were “dismantled,” according to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation,leading to the arrest of six leaders and the seizure of laptops, cellphones, other devices and cash.
Maryland officials said the victims probably will never see their money again.
Investigators this week described how the scams started at the call centers, where workers spent their days looking for American targets through email, text messages, phone calls and computer pop-up warnings.
They often played the role of a tech support worker from, say, Microsoft or Apple, persuading their marks to download software onto their computers. Or they said they were calling from the U.S. Social Security Administration to report that criminals were using the victim’s Social Security number for money laundering, drug trafficking or child pornography. “It’s always something that sounds horrific,” FBI agent Jeremy Capello said.
The terrified victims are often transferred to someone purporting to be from U.S. law enforcement agencies such as the FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration.
“The antennas come down because you think you’re talking to a trusted person in the government,” said John McCarthy, the top prosecutor in Montgomery County, Maryland. “That’s how they suck you into this.”
The big goal: convincing the victims that their money wasn’t safe in the bank and that it needed to be transferred for safekeeping, to the FBI or DEA or even the U.S. Treasury Department. Soon enough, the target — often an otherwise smart person but fully in the grip of skilled impersonators — is routing money to specific bank accounts, purchasing and moving cryptocurrency, buying gold bars for an “agent” of the government to pick up, or sending cash.
“It’s all about the art of making people believe you’re someone you’re not,” said Capello, who works in the FBI’s Baltimore field office and has investigated white-collar fraud for 16 years.
The first person to reach targets, Capello said, often speaks with a noticeable Indian accent. As the victim talks to more people faking identities — especially the purported American law enforcement officers — the voices tend to become more American-sounding, according to Capello. Sometimes that is how the fraudsters speak, but sometimes they are Americanizing their voice through software and AI, according to Capello.
Another central part of the scam: convincing the victims to keep their money movements secret so as not to attract attention from the criminals who already knew about them.
The 58-year-old reported the fraud to detectives at the Montgomery County Police Department, who had arrested several gold-bar scammers working in Maryland, some with ties to Indian call centers. They had put out the word: Come to us if you have been swindled. By the time the 58-year-old fraud victim had arrived, the Montgomery detectives, working alongside the FBI, were determined to trace the frauds to the call centers overseas.
The woman provided a wealth of data of the people she was dealing with: bank account numbers, email addresses, phone numbers. “We were off to the races,” Capello said.
Investigators worked closely with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), slowly linking the woman’s details with others in Maryland and elsewhere in the United States.
The U.S. and Montgomery County investigators were able to present their case to Indian authorities through an FBI agent stationed in Delhi solely tasked with helping to investigate scam call centers in India, according to Capello. Before authorities there could search the call centers, though, they needed sworn statements from at least two U.S. victims, which Capello and the Montgomery detectives were able to provide.
The India raids took place in Noida, Delhi and Kolkata, according to authorities there.
“During the period 2022-2025,” India’s Central Bureau of Investigation said in a news release, “the accused individuals, operating under pseudonymous identities of US Government officials from Drug Enforcement [Administration], Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Social Security Administration, conspired to target US victims by threatening them that their Social Security Numbers had been used for money laundering and drug deliveries.”
The Indian call centers used in frauds, Capello said, sell each other lists of potential American targets with phone numbers and email addresses. And they work in highly competitive operations, with quotas posted on the walls, he said.
The fraudsters present themselves as concerned, diligent government agents, but their power and intimidation is never far from the surface. And they’re not scared to bring it the fore, Capello said, recalling how one victim — balking at their demands — suddenly received an email with what looked like a genuine American arrest warrant and a threat that he would be locked up if he did not follow orders.
The message, in no uncertain terms, was this: “How do we know you’re not involved in this too?”
“These scams exploit fear, trust and vulnerability. They are deeply personal crimes,” Montgomery County Police Captain Marc Erme said.
Capello said it remains very difficult to recover any of the money. But he feels like their work — dismantling the three call centers — will help prevent more scams.
“We’re making an impact,” he said. “We’re chipping away at it.”
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