[eveningcoffee]

I wondered if most of them were just desperate people reading scripts.

It does not matter if were they previously desperate or not. They were committing a crime. If you want to see a western side of similar scams, I would highly recommend you to watch Wolf of the Wall Street.

Unless these people were forced to do this, I do not have pity. This is not indifferent from stealing money on streets of India.

[cpncrunch]

The important question is whether they knew they were committing a crime. Did all of Bernie Madoff's employees end up in jail? I'm pretty sure most of them didn't have any idea what he was doing, but feel free to correct me.

[cpncrunch]

Strange that anyone would downvote this. More info on Madoff's employees:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/madoffs-other-victims-his-former...

Clearly not everyone was in on the "scam" in this instance. I'm not sure why people seem to think that this Indian scam was any different. It doesn't really seem to be giving the employees the benefit of the doubt.

They're told to call a person and say that this person has money owing. They're told that the IRS is their employer. There's no reason to automatically assume that all the call-centre staff are in on the scam.