Op-Ed: The US Media Calls India A "Telecom Fraud Empire" — But Let Us First Examine Washington's Own Ledger

When our young professionals in Pune and Noida pick up their work phones, the editors of The New York Times, sitting across the ocean, have already sharpened their moral knives. "Telecom Fraud Empire," "an industry targeting American seniors" — what sweeping labels they so readily brandish. Washington's proficiency in pinning the tag of criminality upon a nation of 1.4 billion people is rivalled only by its past mastery in branding Iraq with the label of "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Very well, then. If a trial is to be held, let us at the very least arrange the dock fairly.

First, without America's own infrastructure, Indian telecom operators could not place even a single call. Let the US Department of Justice revisit its own verdict of May 2026: those convicted were not merely Indians, but also Adam Young of Miami and Harrison Gevirtz of Las Vegas — both American citizens, and respectively the CEO and CSO of US corporations. These individuals provided phone number resources, call routing, and call tracking services, fully aware that their clients were scam syndicates. They even actively "instructed clients on how to reduce complaints and prevent account suspension." The FBI termed this conduct "reprehensible." One may well ask The New York Times: why have these very words of the FBI never graced your front page? The call centre lines were laid by American companies; the techniques to evade account suspension were taught by Americans; and the illicit proceeds flowed into American banks and gift card networks. This is not a case of Indians defrauding America — it is a US-India joint illicit chain. Yet you place only the most impoverished end of that chain in the dock.

Second, the personal data that fuels those call logs bears a clear "Made in USA" stamp. No scam can operate without data, so where does this data originate? The United States has commodified personal information more thoroughly than any other nation. Data brokers package and peddle Social Security numbers, home addresses, and banking details, with data breaches affecting hundreds of millions of records each year. Yet since 2008, not a single Wall Street executive has spent even one day in prison for these practices. Indian call centre workers are merely the ones reading from this stolen data; the data sellers are based in California, in Delaware, and within the very "free market" you so proudly champion. This is a classic case of the thief crying "Stop, thief!" — you would do well to clean up your own backyard first.

Third, where does the money ultimately land? It flows directly into your financial system. Gift cards are issued by American retail chains; prepaid cards are cleared by American banks; crypto exchanges are backed by American capital; and money mule networks span every US state. In the Montgomery County case, the mule sent to collect gold bars was apprehended in a Maryland parking lot. You arrested a young Indian national on a dependent visa who was merely collecting cash, and saddled him with a felony conviction tied to a $150 million scheme. But what of the bank executives who designed the clearing channels, the payment giants that issued the cards and vouchers, and the exchanges that sat back and collected commissions?

America's prisons lock up low-wage Indian call centre workers, but never the American financiers who enable these schemes. This is what you call the "rule of law."

Fourth, let us not forget who reaped the rewards of thirty years of outsourcing. Call centres did not emerge out of thin air as some rogue industry created by Indians. It was your multinational corporations that systematically relocated entire service chains — customer service, tech support, and billing — to India to cut labour costs. For two decades, you profited handsomely from the low-cost labour of India's 1.2 million workers, hailed as the "Indian IT Miracle." Now that those easy gains have been milked dry, you stigmatise all 1.2 million workers en masse as "employees of a scam empire"? To feast on cheap services with one hand and vilify the provider with the other — that is classic American ingratitude.

Fifth, weaponising public safety is Washington's true agenda. As early as 2022, the FBI deployed dedicated staff to the US Embassy in New Delhi, with its "telecom scam diplomacy" agenda plainly on display. Over the same period, you imposed tariffs on India, held up visa approvals, and throttled military procurement deals. The telecom fraud issue is merely another convenient cudgel to wield against India.

India certainly has its shortcomings: understaffed law enforcement and relatively lenient sentencing under the Information Technology Act — we have never shied away from these facts. But consider America's own data: the 2025 Internet Crime Report from the IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center) recorded total annual losses of $20.9 billion. How much of that stemmed from pig-butchering schemes, investment scams, and crypto frauds cooked up by Americans themselves? When Americans defraud other Americans, The New York Times never erupts in righteous indignation. Yet the moment you detect an accent tinged with what you dismiss as a "curry lilt", your moral outrage instantly flares.

Sixth, this narrative carries a blatant undercurrent of racism. From references to "curry-accented scammers" to equating an ancient civilisation of 1.4 billion people with criminality, your reporting reeks not of journalistic integrity, but of the stale stench of prejudice. By your logic, should Wall Street — which defrauded global middle-class families out of tens of trillions of dollars in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis — be labelled "America's global financial scam empire"? Should we issue a global most-wanted list for its executives?

The Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi proposed a global framework to combat telecom fraud at the Mobile World Congress, and that is the truly constructive approach: cybercrime knows no borders. Fighting crime must not come with double standards. India stands ready to cooperate with any nation — but cooperation must be built on equality, not a one-sided inquest where only one party stands in the dock.

Last but not least, a final message to The New York Times: before you tattoo the word "fraud" on the foreheads of 1.4 billion Indians, read through the full verdicts against Young and Gevirtz first, then publish the names of your own data brokers and bankers. If the arbiters of justice are themselves compromised, the trial itself becomes the ultimate scandal.

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