America seeks extradition of IRS scam boss

Mumbai: A month after the arrest of Sagar Thakkar, the alleged mastermind in the multi-crore Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scam busted by Thane city police, the United States (US) has sent an extradition request through the ministry of external affairs (MEA) seeking his custody. In the scam, employees of around nine call centres had extorted US nationals while posing as their tax and immigration authorities.

The Thane police is unlikely to comply with the request due to the ongoing investigation, said police sources.

Thakkar was named along with 55 other individuals from India, the US and five Ahmedabad-based call centres for his alleged involvement in the fraud — as first reported by The Asian Age on October 29 last year — by the US Justice Department on Thursday.

“The probe into the scam is far from over. We need Thakkar’s custody to bring the probe to its logical conclusion. We are yet to arrest his sister and a couple of other accused who have played an active role in the scam,” said a senior Thane city police
officer.

The police had attached properties worth '5 crore belonging to Thakkar that were in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Most of these properties were commercial spaces, officials said. The investigators are in the process of unravelling the complete details of Thakkar’s investments.

Following his arrest in May, soon after he had arrived from Dubai, the police found out that apart from posing as IRS officers from fake call centres in Mumbai, he also used another means to dupe US nationals.

His employees in Ahmedabad would call up potential victims and tell them that they were eligible for short-term unsecured loans and government grants. They took a processing fee from them to avail of loans but the victims never got any returns.

The scam was operational since 2012 and even had a few US-based accused acting at the behest of the Indian call-centre operators allegedly in roles including those of “data brokers” and “runners”, who facilitated in the selection, and subsequent duping of victims, according sources familiar with the US probe.