If there’s a bigger bunch of crooks and thieves than Indians, they’re not to be found on Planet Earth.

Or anywhere in the Milky Way galaxy either.

After robbing their fellow Indians of money, property and even kidneys, Indians have now taken the globalization mantra to heart.

Indian callers are busy exercising their phony American accents to rob Americans of millions of dollars.

U.S. Court Halts Cheating

At the urging of the Federal Trade Commission, a U.S. District Court in Illinois has stopped an unsavory operation that allegedly made calls from India to collect fake debt from Americans.

The FTC says the operation took in more than $5 million since January 2010.

Here’s an excerpt from the FTC statement:

In tough economic times, many consumers turn to high-interest, short-term payday loans between paychecks. The FTC alleges that information submitted by consumers who applied online for these loans found its way into the hands of the defendants.

Often pretending to be law enforcement or other government authorities, the callers working with the defendants would falsely threaten to immediately arrest and jail consumers if they did not agree to make a payment on a delinquent payday loan, the FTC’s court papers stated. Claiming to be law enforcement, such as a local police department, the “Federal Department of Crime and Prevention,” or simply a “federal investigator,” the callers typically demanded more than $300, and sometimes as much as $2,000. At other times, the callers said they were filing a large lawsuit against the consumer because of the delinquent payday loan or would have the consumer fired from his or her job, according to the FTC.

But the consumers did not owe money to defendants – either the payday loan debts did not exist or the defendants had no authority to collect them because they are owed to someone else, according to the FTC. The court order stops the illegal conduct and freezes the operation’s assets while the FTC moves forward with the case.

The FTC has charged Villa Park, California-based American Credit Crunchers, LLC, an affiliated company called Ebeeze, LLC, and the companies’ owner, Varang K. Thaker, with violating the FTC Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

The FTC complaint alleges that Thaker obtained information (such as Social Security or bank account numbers) about consumers who inquired about, applied for, or obtained online payday loans and then worked with telephone callers in India who called consumers using deceptive statements and threats to convince them to pay debts that were not owed or that he was not authorized to collect,

  Indian Fake Debt Collectors