WASHINGTON–When my phone rang and I saw the familiar DC area code, I picked up, and a man with a slight Indian accent said: “Ma’am, this is the Indian Embassy.”
Expecting a response from the Indian Embassy for an article I was working on, I said, “Is this in regards to my media inquiry?” He said no. He was calling about a problem with my Indian passport. I asked who he called, and when he said a name I didn’t recognize, I informed him he had the wrong person and hung up, figuring it was a scam.
Just a few hours later, I received another call from an unknown number, this time with a New York area code. Curious to see if the previous caller was trying to reach me from another number, I picked up. An automated message, claiming to represent the Consulate General of India, informed me my Indian passport was “blacklisted due to unresolved legal issues,” and asked me to connect with a representative for more information. Then they called me again the next day and left the same message on my voicemail. The scammers knew I was Indian, but it was clear they didn’t think I was a U.S. citizen.
What I learned in the next few days was that I was targeted by a scam that was directed at Indians in the U.S., regardless of their legal status, and had already raised concerns at the Indian Embassy. In fact, the embassy’s website immediately opened to a pop-up announcement declaring that they were aware of the issue and directing people on how to report it. Callers to the Indian Embassy were greeted by an automated message about scam calls. The Indian embassy did not respond to my multiple requests for comment.
Scammers have long targeted immigrant communities in the U.S. However, federal law enforcement has seen a recent surge. Scammers pretending to be embassies or other foreign officials have “been happening for about three years now but [is] increasing in frequency in the last year,” hence a recent press release and podcast to warn the public of this growing scam, the FBI told the Fulcrum.
This increase coincides with the U.S. government’s crackdown on immigration, both in the tail end of the Biden administration, where asylum was halted at the Southern border, and throughout the Trump administration’s multipronged deportation campaign. This includes ICE raids, threats to international students’ legal status, and removing the protected legal status of multiple groups, including Venezuelans.
Juan Pedroza, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said uncertainty and rapid changes to immigration laws and regulations “opens up new opportunities for scam artists to get creative.”
“We do see anecdotal data that when you see rapid changes at the federal level in terms of immigration policies, there does seem to be these new incentives for scam artists to get creative,” Pedroza said. “It makes sense intuitively to me that in the absence of clear pathways to legalization, clear protections for asylum seekers, or something like amnesty, we're just going to keep seeing these scams come back again and again.”
Telemarketing scams in which people pose as embassy officials date back at least as far as 2011, Pedroza said. He conducted the first nationwide study on immigration scams that target noncitizens in 2023. He said immigration scams are underreported and therefore hard to quantify because “there are groups being targeted precisely because they're especially vulnerable and because they're very unlikely to come forward.”
The FBI concurred that such scams are underreported, in a statement responding to questions from the Fulcrum. In fact, the FBI recorded fewer than 100 cases through its Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, portal in the last three years.
“Though the FBI is aware of additional victims not reported to IC3. Some victims report the scam before they lose money, but around half of the victims reported financial losses,” the FBI statement said.
I posted about the scam on my professional social media. In just a week, 10 people in the Indian American community told me they had also been recipients of this scam call in recent months. Aneri Patel, a friend from my undergraduate college, UC Santa Barbara, got in touch with me via Instagram after seeing my post and said she also received the scam call.
“I laughed because I was born in Bakersfield, California, so I do not have a visa or a green card, but I'm curious how they knew I was of Indian descent,” Patel said.
According to the FBI, scammers can get intimate details such as the phone numbers of Indians in the U.S. via “a variety of sources, including data breaches, purchasing data on the dark web, purchasing commercial/advertising data, publicly available data, and social engineering.” Some scammers are using “spoofing” technology, which disguises the caller ID of scammers and masquerades the phone number as that of the embassy on the recipient’s end.
Another friend on a green card, kept anonymous so her immigration status wouldn't be threatened, also received the scam call from someone claiming to represent the Indian embassy. He stated her full name and asked if she was familiar with an Indian phone number that the New Delhi police had traced back to her. He said the number was associated with the perpetrator of scam calls in India, which 27 people reported.
“He was like … the New Delhi police are looking for you, and we've sent your identity to the embassy, and you have to call them and talk to them,” she said. “He was just going on and on about how they were going to come after me, how the embassy was going to come after me, how my immigration status was at risk.”
My friend, who grew up in the U.S., received immigration scam calls a few years prior when she was on a visa. Both previous experience and awareness that “you are basically never going to get a call that is regarding [immigration status]” quickly alerted her that the call was a scam. After she hung up, the scammer tried to contact her via WhatsApp, so she changed her profile photo and name.
“And then he texted me more, and he was like, ‘You changed your name and your profile photo. Why are you not responding to me?’”
Though she knew it was a scam quickly, she said the experience was still frightening.
“It was just the threat of deportation. Even if you know logically that something is not real, when you hear your stability being questioned like that,” she said. “Any sort of instability there can feel really scary. So even if you logically know it's not real, my heart races. My heart definitely started racing just because this guy was threatening me, living in America.”
Pedroza said in some states, like New York, there are stronger laws inhibiting scammers from advertising their services. In states with fewer protections and elected representatives unwelcoming to immigrants, victims may be less likely to come forward.
“[Immigration scam protections] might be less of a priority precisely where the context is turned against immigrants the most,” Pedroza said.
The FBI issued a press release on May 13 that Middle Eastern international students in the U.S. are being targeted by “scammers impersonat[ing] US and foreign government officials claiming there is an issue with the student's immigration status and exploit[ing] this for financial gain.” The FBI also released a podcast on May 19 about how scammers posing as Chinese law enforcement are targeting Chinese international students in the U.S., claiming they’re wanted by law enforcement for illegal activity and extracting large sums of money from their victims, claiming it will resolve the issue.
In a statement to the Fulcrum, the FBI said, “government impersonation scams include a variety of government agencies, and scammers have evolved based on current events to ensure their scams are relevant and convincing,” regarding scammers targeting international students while posing as the Department of Homeland Security. These scammers are attempting to capitalize on the fear that international students have regarding visa revocations.
And while some, such as Patel and I, figured the calls were a scam, we are both U.S. citizens. We are at less risk than people with Indian citizenship. For some immigrant communities, such calls can hold more legitimacy. As my anonymous friend said, especially immigrants new to the U.S. might be more likely to fall for such scams to secure their ability to stay.
“Even for me, it was definitely a little scary, even though I've been raised here, and even though I know exactly what to look out for and what the signs are,” she said. “Getting a call like this, they would definitely do anything that the person asked them to do just to ensure that they can stay in this country.”
Atmika Iyer is a graduate student in Northwestern Medill’s Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs reporting program. Atmika is also a journalism intern with the Fulcrum.
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