Think you’re immune to scammers? Not true, AARP warns Tri-Citians

One boiler room in Mumbai robo-called 50,000 U.S. phone numbers a day before Indian authorities shut it down.

The pitch, relayed in Indian-accented English, aimed to frighten recipients: This is the Internal Revenue Service and you need to resolve a problem with your tax return or face dire consequences.

Call us.

An astonishing 10,000 to 15,000 people each day returned the fake call, according to one man who worked for the Mumbai scam as a “closer.”

The man who answered calls with a cheerful, “This is Adam Smith,” was actually Jayesh Dubey, 19. Now, he’s sharing his experience with American audiences as part of AARP’s fraud prevention outreach.

Americans are more susceptible than they think to the IRS scam and its cousins — the IT support scam, the lost-passport scam and the grandchild-in-trouble scam — according to a new survey released by the Washington chapter of AARP, Unmasking the Imposters.

According to the survey, 85 percent were confident they could spot scams but 77 percent failed a simple test of their ability to recognize the common strategies used to overcome skepticism with fear.

AARP shared its research with some Tri-Citians Thursday, drawing hundreds to the Three Rivers Convention Center for its Fraud Watch program. AARP brought along Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, whose office has made consumer fraud a priority.

It fielded 42,000 fraud complaints in 2016, more than half from residents age 50 or over, Ferguson said.

AARP recruited Dubey to share the tricks he used to get callers to send gift cards to settle imaginary IRS bills for its anti-fraud effort. Like most, he is a young man who fell into a job that paid many times more than what he could earn in a legitimate business.

“These are not hardcore criminals. These were just kids who stumbled into working in jobs in these boiler rooms,” said Doug Shadel, director of the Washington AARP chapter.

Those who returned the fake IRS call would be connected to Dubey, or one of his hundreds of co-workers.

In time, his conscience got the better of him and he quit his “job.” In the video, Dubey’s Indian accent is obvious. But, he told interviewers, spending day after day speaking with U.S. victims Americanized his phone voice and made him more believable to victims.

Not long after he quit, 200 government agents flooded his former office.

They blocked the exits and detained 700 of his former co-workers for questioning.

Owner Sagar Thakkar, a 24-year-old “entrepreneur” who ran similar shops around the world, eventually confessed. The U.S. Justice Department issued 61 indictments in the case, which netted a reported $300 million from U.S. victims.

Dubey offered two takeaways: Scam shops prey almost exclusively on Americans and their harsh-sounding threats are pure bluster. In once case, an aggressive scammer was recorded ordering a mark to report to a local police station to be arrested.

“We don’t know anybody in America,” Dubey said on camera.

For the record, the IRS does not call people about problems. It contacts taxpayers by mail. Anyone who receives a suspicious call from the IRS, bank or other organization should hang up. If you’re worried, the AARP said, call your bank or the IRS to check.

Ferguson has made going after fraudsters a priority since he became Washington’s top lawyer in 2013, expanding the consumer protection division from eight attorneys to 25. The state’s attorneys routinely sue scammers and recover enough money to cover the cost of the office and return money to the state treasury.

“We’re a revenue generator for the state,” Ferguson said. But recovery is a poor substitute for prevention and Ferguson said he’s focused on training Washington residents to hang up on suspicious calls. If you are scammed, contact his office.

Ferguson shared a story of how his elderly, widowed mother became the target of a scam shortly after he took office. He’d stopped by to check on her and found her puzzling over an email from a friend claiming to need $1,000 to travel home after losing her passport.

She was skeptical but concerned about her friend. Ferguson smelled a scam and his mother called her friend, verifying she was safe at home. The email account had been hijacked.

Ferguson said most fraud victims are sheepish about admitting they’ve fallen for a scam. That’s why it’s so important to get educated and to talk to friends, family and particularly elderly relatives who live alone not to let fear get the upper hand.

“Not everybody who is 85 in Washington who lives alone has a son who is attorney general who stops by to check on her,” he said.

This story was originally published May 25, 2017 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Think you’re immune to scammers? Not true, AARP warns Tri-Citians."