Beware this Immigration Phone Fraud Scam!

scam inBy Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: The Indian woman at the gurdwara this past weekend was visibly agitated and distressed by the ordeal that she had just gone through two days earlier. She had just been swindled out of $3,800 and wanted to see if she could get some help in nabbing the crooks, and especially wanted to tell her story. But for obvious reasons, she asked to stay anonymous.

Last Thursday, April 16, someone posing as an agent of the NCIS, the National Citizenship and Immigration Service, called her cell phone and told her she was in a heap of trouble regarding some false documentation and needed to wire transfer $3,800 at once to avoid legal action and being incarcerated.

Even though the woman is a US citizen and has been here for 11 years, she was scared by the call and the crooks pried on her fears, forcing her to put cash on her Reload card and then transferred the money to their own account. The scam artists were so brazen that they sent a Fiesta taxi driver to her apartment to pick her up since she doesn’t drive and take her to the Randalls on West Bellfort to make the transaction.

The taxi driver may have been in on it too, as he refused to take a credit card and insisted on cash.

Since she was short by $500, the crooks made her go to the Randalls on Memorial Drive the next day and pull out the remaining money. Again, a Fiesta Taxi driver took her and she had to pay him cash. Later on Friday, when she realized that she had been duped, the woman called the Houston police, who took her information down but told her she didn’t stand a chance of getting her money back or nabbing the crooks.

This kind of phone scam involving the NCIS has been going around for many months and unfortunately for this lady, still seems to take in some innocent people. The public needs to be aware and vigilant against these scam artists.