An Indian student in the United States was duped by scammers pretending to be Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, reported Newsweek.
Shreya Bedi, a Master's student at Indiana University Bloomington came to the United States in 2022 on an F-1 visa.
She received the call on May 29th when the imposters said that she had violated immigration laws and forced her to purchase $5000 worth of gift cards as ‘bond' payments in order to avoid arrest and deportation.
"He gave me his name and badge number and told me to verify his office details by going to ice.gov and looking up the office in Maryland. I could confirm it was the same phone number he was calling from," Bedi said.
Subsequently, she received a second phone call from someone else posing as an officer from Olympia Police Department, and she was told not to disconnect the call as her phone was being monitored. They said that there was an arrest warrant for her.
“I felt completely trapped because they kept me on the phone for three hours straight, repeatedly warning me that hanging up or contacting anyone would violate my case and make things worse. I was too scared to risk it,” said Bedi.
They had access to all her personal information - the Indian city she came from, how she entered the US and her academic records. "They had so many of my personal details that only official agencies would know," she said.
The scammers directed her to buy Apple and Target gift cards worth $5000 and share the codes with them. They also said that a police officer would collect the cards and bond paper from her the next day but there was no follow-up.
“They put me through hours of psychological torture, making me believe I was going to be deported and arrested,” she added.
Bedi is now facing a huge financial challenge as she is paying off student loans and now she has $5000 in debt.
"I'm living alone in the U.S. with no family support. This money was supposed to help me stay afloat and plan my future here," she said.
"It completely derailed my plans. This affects everything—my ability to save money, my timeline for either returning to India or applying for an H1B visa."
She said that as an international student, it is difficult to understand how the system in the US works which makes them “easy targets”, she added, "I feel embarrassed that I fell for this, but I want others to learn from my mistake."
Bedi is now trying to raise funds on GoFundMe and has cautioned other international students. “You always have the right to hang up and call a lawyer, government agencies almost never call you directly; they send official mail,” she said. “No legitimate government agency will ever ask for gift cards, bank details, or your Social Security number over the phone. If someone asks for any of these things, it's definitely a scam.”
There has been a rise in reports of individuals impersonating ICE agents amid a ramp up in arrests across the country which have added to existing fears of law enforcement in the migrant community. On June 5th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained more than 2,200 people, according to a report by the NBC News, the most number of arrests in a single day.
