The call may begin with a warning about a compromised bank account or a stolen identity. The caller claims to represent a technology company, a bank or a US government agency. By the time the conversation ends, an American retiree may have agreed to withdraw savings or hand over gold to a stranger.
Behind some of these encounters are illegal call centres in India. Cases brought by American and Indian authorities show how these operations connect callers, organisers and financiers in India with couriers and money launderers in the United States. The evidence places India among the important operating bases for scams targeting Americans, particularly those involving government impersonation and bogus technical support.
A case announced on October 5, 2026, offers a striking example. A federal jury in Austin, Texas, convicted Indian national Bhavesh Kumar Thakkar on charges related to wire fraud and money laundering. According to US prosecutors, call-centre scammers in India obtained cash and gold from elderly Americans, while Thakkar coordinated the receipt and laundering of the proceeds in the United States. Funds passed through Los Angeles and New York before being laundered overseas. Prosecutors said he was directly connected to more than $150 million in fraud proceeds. That figure describes his connection to the wider operation, rather than his personal earnings.
Less than two weeks earlier, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest of Ankit Satishchandra Pandey in another alleged scheme targeting Americans. Investigators said an illegal call-centre network had operated from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, since 2024. Callers allegedly impersonated US federal officials and told victims that their identities had been used to access child sexual abuse material. Victims were persuaded to withdraw money, buy gold and hand it to couriers in the United States. The CBI put the alleged losses at more than $7.21 million. The investigation remains open.
These cases follow an established pattern. In November 2020, a US court sentenced Ahmedabad-based call-centre operator Hitesh Madhubhai Patel to 20 years in prison. Patel admitted operating and financing several Indian call centres, including HGLOBAL. Employees impersonated American tax and immigration officials, while associates in the United States collected and laundered victims’ money. Patel exchanged scripts and operating instructions with his accomplices. His role placed management and financing in India, alongside the people making the calls.
The distinction matters. The nationality of an individual arrested abroad says little, by itself, about where a criminal enterprise is run. Evidence that its owners, funding and operating instructions originate in India provides a much stronger basis for describing the country as a hub for that network.
The call-centre model also helps explain how these scams can operate at scale. English-language communication and telephone-based customer service are familiar features of India’s legitimate services economy. Criminal groups can misuse similar skills and working arrangements to impersonate businesses and public agencies. This does not implicate the wider outsourcing industry. It does explain why an illegal operation can resemble an ordinary workplace, with recruitment, supervision and specialised jobs.
An Indian raid in August 2025 exposed that division of labour. The CBI found an alleged fake Amazon support operation in rented premises at a resort in Igatpuri, Maharashtra. Its targets included Americans and Canadians. Investigators reported finding 62 employees working when they entered, and seized 44 laptops and 71 mobile phones. The operation assigned workers different roles, including placing calls, verifying information and securing payments.
Such operations also need access to overseas telephone networks. In February 2022, US prosecutors charged several India-based call centres and their directors with conspiring with internet-telephone provider E Sampark to send tens of millions of scam calls to American consumers. The allegations covered tax and Social Security impersonation, as well as fraudulent loan offers. The number of calls does not reveal how many people lost money. It does show why scrutiny must extend to the businesses carrying the traffic.
The fraud itself often depends less on technical sophistication than on a convincing account of an emergency. A victim is told that an identity has been stolen, a computer compromised or savings placed at risk. The caller offers a way out, provided the victim acts immediately.
The US Federal Trade Commission has described how impersonators keep people on the phone, heightening fear and limiting opportunities to consult relatives or friends. Someone who believes a transfer will protect their savings may willingly authorise the very transaction that takes those savings away. The caller has turned an ordinary concern about security into a reason to abandon normal caution.
Once money crosses several accounts or jurisdictions, recovering it becomes harder. The victim may be in Maryland, the caller in India and the courier elsewhere in the United States. Investigators must connect those parts before they can identify who controls the operation. Arresting a courier may interrupt a collection, but leave the people organising the calls untouched.
A joint investigation announced by the FBI’s Baltimore field office in February 2026 shows what a broader inquiry can achieve. Authorities traced government-impersonation and technical-support scams affecting about 660 American complainants to call-centre operations in India. Reported losses totalled nearly $48.8 million. Indian authorities dismantled the operations in December 2025 and arrested six alleged leaders. A Maryland prosecutor described an Indian call centre identified in the investigation as the hub for hundreds of scams.
For Bangladesh and other South Asian countries, these cases deserve attention beyond the sums stolen from Americans. They reveal how criminal groups can use ordinary commercial arrangements—rented offices, telecommunications services and payment channels—to conduct fraud across borders. Authorities need to distinguish legitimate business from criminal activity without treating every overseas service provider or foreign worker as a suspect.
That requires practical cooperation: checking what suspicious businesses actually do, investigating abnormal calling activity, tracing payments and preserving evidence quickly enough for another country to use it. Success should be measured partly by whether organisers are prosecuted and assets recovered, rather than by arrest totals alone.
The evidence also calls for care in describing India’s role. It establishes India as an important base for particular forms of fraud against Americans. It does not establish that India accounts for most US telecom or online fraud, or that the Indian public bears responsibility for these networks.
India’s enforcement actions demonstrate a willingness to pursue offenders. The repeated discovery of substantial operations shows how much work remains. As a major provider of cross-border digital services, India has a strong interest in preventing criminal call centres from damaging trust in that trade.
The most useful test of future cooperation will be whether it reaches the people who finance and direct these schemes. A caller can be replaced and an office reopened. Bringing organisers to justice, recovering proceeds and closing the channels that sustain their business would make a more lasting difference.
Writer: Ritthirong, Senior Fellow, Lotus Center for Dialogu