U.S. Business Practices Oppose Effective Crackdown on “Spoofing” Scams
By: Ian Lipka
In 2020, Indian national Hitesh Madhubhai Patel was sentenced to twenty years in prison and almost $9 million in restitution for crimes relating to online and telephone scams he owned and organized.[1] Patel funded and ran India-based call centers that defrauded U.S. victims out of somewhere between $25 million and $65 million from 2013-2016.[2] While Patel’s conviction was certainly a victory for the Justice Department, the issue of online and telephone scams has dramatically increased since Patel’s sentencing five years ago. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) concluded that U.S. victims lost $16.6 billion in 2024 from online and telephone scams—compared to just shy of $4 billion in 2020.
Citizens are fraudulently deprived of their money now more than ever. And while criminal prosecutions are effective in their own right, the international nature of these scams makes it extremely difficult for countries to stifle them.[4] Most scammers operate overseas and are therefore often beyond the jurisdiction of the victim nation.[5]
Almost four out of every five adults in the U.S. view online/telephone attacks as a major national problem.[6] Countermeasures are needed, but solving the issue of international scamming is not so simple. The problem may be better addressed by tackling the contributing smaller issues gradually. One such issue primed for change is known as “spoofing.”