Americans Lost Over $10 Billion To Fraudsters In India This Year: Report

US citizens lost more than $10 billion to phishing gangs and fraudsters operating from India in 2022.

A majority of these victims were found to be elderly, who were duped of over $3 billion in the last two years, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data shows, reported The Times of India. 

Fraudsters running illegal call centres in India have been targeting people based in the US, especially senior citizens, on the pretext of providing technical support or other assistance.

Americans lost $10.2 billion through the Internet or call centre-related fraud in just the last 11 months.

This indicates a jump of 47 per cent as compared to the last year, when the total money lost was put at $6.9 billion, the report added.

Earlier this month, Delhi Police officials informed that they had arrested three men running illegal call centres in the capital and defrauding US senior citizens by promising them technical support for the "malfunctioning" of their systems.

While three accused were caught in Delhi after overnight raids, one of their accomplices was caught by Canadian Law Enforcement Agency in Toronto and the other from New Jersey, US, by the FBI.

The police informed that as per the information shared by the US, over 20,000 victims fell prey to such scams causing a revenue loss of $10 million to America between 2012 and 2020.

Given this rise in frauds originating from India, the FBI deputed a permanent representative at the US Embassy in New Delhi.

With this, the FBI aims to curb such crimes by working with the CBI, Interpol, and the Delhi Police, the TOI report said.

The official attached with the US embassy in Delhi, Suhel Daud, was quoted as saying by TOI that romance-related frauds led to a loss of around Rs 8,000 crore to victims in 2021 and Rs 8,000 crore in the last 11 months of this year as per frauds reported on FBI's website.