Scammers are ripping off expats in the United States by posing as bogus immigration officers and demanding on-the-spot payments to put right mistakes in visas.
The fraudsters threaten expats with deportation if they fail to pay up.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has warned that crooks are conning expats out of thousands of dollars with the scam.
Posing as an immigration services official, the scammer telephones expats and asks for confidential personal details, like their social security and passport numbers.
Then the fraudster asks the expat to hold the line while they check the records.
Deportation threats
They come back on the line and tell the expat that the information does not tie up with the details on file, and that they will have to pay a fee to correct the information.
If the expat declines to make a payment, the caller then threatens that unless the payment is made and the documents are put in order, deportation proceedings will start.
“We have had many complaints about this scam in just the past few days. Scammers are using a technique called Caller ID spoofing to display a misleading or inaccurate phone number in a recipient’s Caller ID to make them think the call is from us,” said a USCIS spokesman.
“If the victims fail to hand over their bank details for a payment there and then, the scammers threaten them with deportation.
“If any expats receive a call asking for personal information, hang up because it’s not from us. USCIS never requests confidential data or payments over the phone.”
Stolen identities
USCIS believes the reported calls are just a few of the number of attempted scams and urges expats to be wary of callers claiming to represent the immigration service.
“Anyone picking up a call from someone claiming to be from USCIS who makes deportation threats or demands they make a payment or go to a store to buy a money order should hang up and report the matter to us as it is most certainly a scam,” said the spokesman.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission has warned a rising number of identity thefts are costing scam victims millions of dollars.
As the US tax filing season starts, the FTC revealed that one of the most common frauds was stealing a social security number and filing a false tax return to generate a refund that is then stolen.
