Scam Likely | 8. Hunt the Masterminds
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Welcome to another round of Boardroom or Miro Board. Today we talk retrospectives with Agile coach Maria. Let's go. First question. You've spent two hours in a team retro, but the only input you've heard is Dave's. Boardroom or Miro Board? Boardroom. In Miro, Dave can't hog the space because everyone can add thoughts anonymously, online at the same time. Correct.

Next, you need the team to act on feedback fast. So you turn all those retro notes into Jira tasks. Miro all the way. And I can assign those tasks to teammates. You're nailing this. Now, you see hundreds of sticky notes from the retro. A real mess. But you organize them into five themes in just seconds. Miro.

I basically get back an entire hour when I use its AI tools for clustering. And she's done it. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash retro now for a free business plan trial to unlock advanced retro tools like private mode, voting, and two-way jira syncing. That's miro.com slash retro now. Campsite Media.

The city of Ahmedabad is known for many things. It's a bustling metropolis with 8 million people, a major hub of commerce and industry.

It was also the epicenter of the scam call operation we had been trying to understand while making this show. We thought we could track down some of the masterminds there, and maybe even talk to the person who U.S. authorities alleged was the biggest mastermind still at large, Shaggy, the flamboyant whiz kid of the scam. So, in late April of this year, my producer Johnny and I arrived.

A driver picked us up at the airport in an SUV. Driving into Ahmedabad from the airport, we saw all the signs of an expanding metropolis. The city has a gleaming riverfront, where new apartment complexes and shiny hotels are coming up.

Crossing a bridge, we entered downtown, driving past malls and restaurants and shops, swarming with people. We didn't have much specific information on where Shaggy was living or what he was doing currently, but we did have some clues about where to find some of his alleged associates in the scam. I wanted to talk to them to find out how the scam originated in Ahmedabad and how it grew to be so big.

We had an address for a business owned by a guy named Vicky Bhardwaj. Vicky is charged in the U.S. indictment and identified as a call center operator, one of the top positions in the scam. But as far as I could tell, Vicky hadn't faced any punishment from Indian authorities. Vicky's office was in a building called the Sears Tower. It wasn't a skyscraper. There were only a dozen or so floors, but it was tall for where we were in Ahmedabad.

Parked motorbikes filled the small plaza out front. We walked through the narrow, dimly lit lobby. Among the business names listed on the wall was Indiquip Limited, where Vicky is a director. We hopped on the elevator and pressed 2. Second floor.

Okay, we are lucky because the name of the company is correct. We were standing out in the hallway. The office looked quiet. We could see one employee inside at a desk. He came to the door. How are you? Good. Looking for Vicky. He's not here. Where is he? The employee invited us in, asked us to sit across from him.

The AC was humming loudly in the background, gearing up to fight the Ahmedabad heat. This was a small office, low ceiling, tile floors, and it was clear from the lack of computer terminals and phones that it wasn't a call center. The employee told me Vicky wasn't there, but he said I could speak to Vicky's assistant. He called him, then handed me the phone. I talked to him in Hindi. My name is Yudhijit Bhattacharya.

I live in Washington, D.C. and I'm here to meet Vicky Bhardwaj. I said I wanted to interview Vicky for a podcast about a call center scam. The assistant told me Vicky was out of town. He was in Mumbai. It sounded like a polite no. I offered that I could fly to Mumbai and take Vicky out to dinner. The assistant laughed at my proposal. Then the employee at the desk took his phone back and started speaking to the assistant. I don't know, sir. He came here and asked me.

I overheard the assistant's voice through the phone. Can they hear me, he asked. I saw the employee at the desk turn down the phone volume. We were starting to feel distinctly unwelcome. I turned to Johnny. Apparently, Vicky Bharadwaj is very, he's almost impossible to access. There's this other guy who's an assistant to Vicky Bharadwaj, the guy who was on the phone. He is the only guy that...

our friend here communicates with. So it's just, it's real interesting, isn't it? All right, thank you so much. As I sat there composing a WhatsApp message to send to Vicky's assistant, we noticed the employee, our friend, raise his smartphone and take a couple of photos of us. It was a swift move, intended to be covert. It was time to get out of there. We're inviting trouble at this point. I'm getting very noticeable.

because, you know, he called Vicky Bhardwaj. And he's telling us that Vicky Bhardwaj isn't taking his call. That's just another way of saying the instructions from Vicky Bhardwaj are, I don't want to meet them, send them away. The alleged leaders of the scam still seem to be operating in the shadows. We would have to keep looking.

From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scam Likely, the fourth season of Chameleon. I'm Yudhijit Paricharjee. Episode 8, our final episode, Hunt the Monster Minds.

There was at least one person in India who I was pretty sure would be happy to talk about Shaggy. His name is Shishir Hire, and he's a lawyer. Shishir met me and Johnny at the Oberoi in Mumbai. It's an opulent hotel, a place where professional cricket players and Bollywood stars sometimes hang out. Shishir was at ease there. He's politically savvy and charming, the kind of guy who knows how to be friendly with everyone.

Once we got situated in one of the Oberoi's rooms, Shishir showed us some documents from the case we were there to ask him about. So is that the charge sheet actually? This is a charge sheet, part of a charge sheet. In 2016, after the raid at the Miro Road call center in Thani, where best friend scammers turned whistleblowers Pawan and Jayesh worked,

Shishir got a call from a senior police official. He said, "Have you read today's newspaper?" I said, "Are you referring to call center fraud?" He said, "Yes, I'm referring to call center fraud." Then he said, "Sir, we want your assistance." They wanted him to serve as a prosecutor and lead the case against the scammers. Shishir is used to prosecuting high-profile cases. He's been the state government's go-to guy for bringing big investigations to fruition.

What he remembers about getting the scam call case is that when he started going through the evidence, he couldn't help but admire the complexity of the con. This is a superbly crafted offense where beautifully intelligent minds were involved. And only thing is that their intelligence was used for the wrong purpose. One of those beautifully intelligent minds was Shaggy. A smart chap for 20, 22 years old.

with a great criminal mentality. Shaggy wasn't at the call centers on Mirror Road at the time of the raid. He was untraceable for a while. And then Indian authorities got word that he had fled to Dubai. But he was eventually persuaded to return to India, where the police immediately arrested him.

It made the newspapers all around the country, with headlines saying, Call Center Scam, Kingpin Arrested, accompanied by a photograph of the bespectacled, baby-faced Shaggy. He was languishing in a jail as a very common criminal from a street. He was kept with that particular status only, because we do not have a segregation of the offenders in India.

Shaggy stayed in jail for over a year, but eventually he was granted bail and disappeared from public view. He would have to show up in court when his trial began, but when was that going to be? I was talking with Shishir in April 2022, four years since Shaggy was released, and a trial date still hadn't been set.

Shishir says Shaggy's lawyers kept asking the judge for more time. So what are some of the tricks that defense attorneys use in order to delay trial? Well, I will definitely tell you, but I would like to charge you for telling you those tricks. Because through me, some U.S. attorneys will take that tricks and your system will get spoiled. So I don't want to spoil your system. That's a great answer. Well...

But as I'm on your platform, I must tell you some tricks. Those tricks aren't actually all that different from what a defense lawyer in America might employ. The defendant has a family emergency. The defense didn't get to go through all the evidence and needs more time. There's some procedural issue that must be settled in a hearing before the trial can proceed. But there was another reason for the delay. Our courts are overburdened. We are the second most populous country in the world.

So we have even that burden is again on the judicial system also. What is the likelihood of this trial getting underway anytime soon? I hope that in the next six months the trial will start. You've been saying that to me for the last three years. I'm laughing because what else can you do? Cases in the Indian legal system can drag on for decades.

Property disputes are handed down from one generation to the next. White-collar criminals and mafia dons can manipulate the legal process to remain unaccountable for brazen violations of the law. Shishir waffled when I asked him what hope there was that justice would be served. It wasn't just Shaggy. Dozens of alleged scammers in India had been indicted, but nobody had been prosecuted yet. And I thought they probably never would be prosecuted.

The best the government had done so far was take away Shaggy's toys. His entire asset was seized. He was very much fond of fancy cars, sports bike, sports cars. Then he was very much into the high-profile gambling and he was spending money like anything because always it was free flow money for him.

The biggest thing they seized was his famous supercar, a bright orange Audi RD, reportedly worth more than $300,000. It was the one he had bought from the then-captain of the Indian cricket team. Where is this car now? That car is still with the crime branch. It is wasted. It is ruined. Nobody's driving? No, nobody's driving. It's without even, the tires are flat. The machine must have been chocked up.

And he even didn't apply to get that car back. There are certain provisions in law which allow you to apply for getting your asset back. But he didn't apply. It shows that he was even less bothered about this fancy car. Maybe Shaggy didn't bother because he still has so much money. Or maybe his priority at the moment is to stay hidden. We'll be right back.

If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.

into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.

From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Robert F. Carver III.

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.

From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. After striking out in our attempt to find Vicky Bhardwaj, we kept driving around Ahmedabad looking for other names. And then we got a bit of a break. We were looking for Tilak Joshi,

allegedly a major player in the scam. According to US authorities, he worked alongside Shaggy and communicated directly with the top kingpin, Hitesh Patel. We found Tilak's neighborhood easily.

And then, our driver Vipul recognized the house where Tilak lived with his brother and his parents. So, let me translate that. So, he has a friend who lives right here in one of these homes. And apparently that friend told him that the guy who lives here seems very fishy because

He, you know, he changes cars all the time. On Diwali, you know, he bursts so many crackers that you wouldn't believe. And if you just see, the house looks very different, you know. The house looks, you know, much more well-appointed. Just the exterior is all done up nice compared to the other homes. We were about to learn more.

Our driver Vipul's friend, who lives two doors down from Tilak Joshi's house, offered to facilitate an interview. He called up Tilak's dad, told him what we wanted, and asked if he'd talk to us. This time, we didn't get blown off. Tilak's dad said, "Come on over!" It felt surreal. We were being invited into the home of one of the alleged masterminds of the scam. Tilak's dad and his dog, Scotch, greeted us.

India was in the middle of a historic heat wave, so the fan and air conditioner were running full blast. Johnny and I sat down on a couple of couches in the living room, along with Vipul and his friend. Tilak's dad sat across from us. He's a stalky man with big eyes and a smiling manner. He was so welcoming that I felt uncomfortable.

It was almost like he wanted to preempt me from asking any unpleasant questions. Off to the side, inside of a long alcove along the wall, were idols of Hindu gods and goddesses. Tilak's dad told me the family had gone through a hard time lately, but now things were better, thanks to the blessings of the gods along the wall. And then I told him why I was there.

that there was this indictment in the United States charging several individuals with criminal conspiracy. And one of those people is, I understand, your son, Tilak Joshi. Yeah. I told Tilak's dad that we wanted to give Tilak a chance to tell his story. We weren't with law enforcement or the government. We just wanted his perspective on the whole thing.

Tilak had apparently just left to Medabad the day before and gone to Delhi for work.

What work exactly? His father wasn't sure. We had heard this kind of thing before when knocking on doors. Oh, you just missed so-and-so. They just left town. I asked Dilak's dad what he knew of the business his son had been running. Have you ever visited the call center? Were you ever inside or no? Yeah, yeah, I was sitting there. Oh, you were? Okay. There were 20%, but legally they used to do when I used to go at night and I used to come back at night.

Tilak's dad used to go to the call center regularly, he told us. But he had no clue about the work that was done there or who the call center's clients were. In any case, he said, the call center didn't exist anymore. Did the police come and shut the call center down? No, no, no. We itself have closed down. Okay. Police used to come take their aptas. Okay.

What Tilak's dad is claiming is that the police used to visit the call center to demand bribes. And so, Tilak shut it down. They caught them? Oh, so Tilak was—was he arrested? Do you know what the case was about? What was that case about?

Tilak was apparently held for just one day and then released. It was clear to me that Tilak's dad knew more.

But I could tell that the only way he was going to share the information was if one of the gods in the alcove intervened on my behalf. Still, I was glad he hadn't shooed us away. I'm really, really moved by the graciousness with which you received us despite the, you know, the awkwardness of the subject at hand. Thank you so much. Thank you. As we were getting ready to leave, he agreed to pass on a message to Tilak.

That night, I went to visit an old high school friend who lives in Ahmedabad. We'd just entered his apartment when my phone started to ring. It was a WhatsApp call from an American number I didn't recognize. I answered. It was Tilak. Johnny and I hustled into an empty room in my friend's apartment to talk.

Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you good. So the reason that I wanted to talk to you was that your name is on this indictment. I'm sure you know that there was an investigation. My name is on the indictment, but it is years ago that that was there. And I had a company in U.S. I don't know why my name came out. I had my company itself in U.S. We were doing debt consolidations. We were not into the scam.

Dilak's story is that his call center wasn't scamming people. It was selling a debt consolidation service. So I pressed him about why his name showed up on the indictment. That's when he told me that he had run a different company, which had somehow gotten linked to the scam. Why do you think that you've gotten caught up in this? I was processing payments. I don't deny on that. I had a company, and that company got into trouble. So we had an issue with a guy also.

And then we shut it off. Right. So were you ever in the U.S., Tilak? I'm not comfortable in telling you that. I'm sorry. No, but I mean, if your company was running in the U.S., then you were probably in the U.S., right? No, I was not in the U.S. Oh, okay. At that time. Okay. So the company in the U.S. The company in the U.S. was processing payments. And these were payments that were coming in from...

the fraudulent activity that Hitesh's call center was doing. Is that correct? I did not know what was that going on. I did not know and I am not sure what happened exactly. But there were chargebacks that came and then my company went into trouble. So that's the only reason why I stopped his payment processing. So you also have to understand that it's not me who has done it.

Okay, but Tilak, what about the call center in Ahmedabad? Like, who were your clients here? Yes, I was dealing with three clients, but I'll not name the guys. I'm sorry, because I don't want them into trouble now. Tilak is saying that his company was helping Hitesh, the kingpin of the scam.

He was moving money for him, but he didn't know the money was stolen from victims. Basically, I did nothing wrong. I was naive and got sucked into this mess. Or something like that. I wasn't sure what his defense was exactly. So why don't we do this? You know, I know that you're not in Ahmedabad. That's a shame. I would have loved to meet you. Where are you right now?

I won't disclose my location, I'm sorry. No, but if you're like one hour away from Ahmedabad, then you're not in Ahmedabad. It's not one hour. It'll take you approximately more time to reach me. Like what, two hours maybe? Three or four hours. Three or four hours is not that bad. We can certainly meet. We can, but I need to have a positive response. I also have to see what's going on.

I got a video call from Tilak early the next morning just as I was waking up, and I wasn't able to record.

When I asked him what city he was in, he laughed. It looked like he was sitting in a hotel room. He had long, unkempt hair, stubble that suggested he hadn't shaved in days, and dark circles under his eyes. Tillak was keen to find out if I knew the exact nature of evidence U.S. authorities had against him. I told him he'd have to fly to the U.S. to find out, which made him laugh again. His tone became friendlier. He started calling me bro.

He admitted to having dealings with Hitesh and occasionally drinking beer with him. Loosening up even more, he made a tacit admission. Everything was going so well in the early years of the scam, he told me. Then Hitesh and Shaggy and some of the others got too greedy, he said, without explaining what that meant. That's what spoiled it for everyone. And that's when he quit the business. He insisted he had been a small player.

I kept trying, but in the end, Tilak wouldn't agree to meet in person. He was worried he would get even farther into, quote, deep shit. Eventually, he sent me a WhatsApp message that read, Sorry bro, I'm not up for the interview. You're listening to Scam Likely. More after this. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Johnny and I kept digging, but we weren't getting very far.

There were about a dozen individuals we were pursuing. They had homes, families, wealth. It was evident they were around. And yet, not one of them was willing to be found. The whole time we were searching for them, we got the feeling that they were aware of our movements. Eventually, we sat down with the top cybercrime cop in Ahmedabad, who didn't want us to record him.

He didn't have much to say anyway. Ahmedabad was no longer a center of phone scams, he told me, because the police had cleaned everything up. When I got back into our car, I was frustrated. You know, I think this guy just doesn't think it's his problem to have to deal with at all. But where was Shaggy? The cop didn't seem to know anything. Shaggy's alleged associates claimed they had no idea about his whereabouts.

When I spoke to Shishir, the prosecutor in Mumbai, he gave me the number for Shaggy's lawyer. I left him a message. One afternoon, as we were driving around Ahmedabad, he called. I put him on the speakerphone. How are you doing, sir?

Yes, yes, yes. How are you doing, sir? I told him I was hoping to speak to Shaggy. He listened. Then he pointed out that Shaggy and everyone else in India who'd been named in the US indictment had not been proven guilty. Yes, yes, of course, of course. Yes.

It was true, of course, that the story had been told by the police, except that all the defendants who had been prosecuted in U.S. court had pled guilty to the charges, and the same evidence that had compelled them to plead guilty applied to the defendants in India, too, including Shaggy. Still, his lawyer did what he was supposed to do.

He trotted out a defense. How could anybody pinpoint the exact fraud and link it to Shaggy? After all, there were 700 people working at the Mirror Road call centers. A victim in the US could have been called by any one of them. How was Shaggy responsible?

Perhaps some questions remained, but many had been answered. By the time we were leaving Ahmedabad, I told Johnny a lot of what had gone on there felt quite clear to me.

And so really what's happened is you've had, like there have been dozens of people in India who've made tens of millions of dollars here quietly with no consequence without even losing their reputation. That's what's happened. I mean it's incredible what has gone on here. Can you believe that? It's tempting to look into a case like this and get cynical. Many of the bad guys are still at large.

There was a drop in scam calls for a few months after the takedowns, but as anyone with a cell phone knows, scam calls continue unabated. What did the DHS investigators, Dave, Chris, and Dylan, the guys who gave a shit, really achieve? It can feel like the 61-count indictment made no more than a minor dent in the scamming industry. Perhaps that's true, and yes, telefraud continues,

But Chris does think something has been achieved. Authorities can no longer ignore telefraud, even if there are still limits to what they can do. I think people are starting to come around to this, the biggest issue at the end of the day, drug cases you seize money, gun cases you seize money. In these cases, you're just getting justice, you're not getting money.

Chris recently left the DHS to work in the private sector. But Dave and Dylan are still at it, still pursuing cases like Operation Outsource. They believe unraveling the call center conspiracy has made the next generation of potential scammers think twice. With a lot of these scammers, they're just really upset that they got caught because there's so many that don't.

Well, now they've kind of set a precedent and be like, no, they're getting caught. Like, so now when you're like that 21-year-old kid who wants to go out and be a runner because he can make $10,000 a month doing this, he's like, I don't want to touch that because that guy who just went to the ATM, he got 12 years. I'm not touching this with a 10-foot pole. The reason this case mattered to me, outside of seeking justice for victims like Dhruv and Michelle and Ophelia's father, is a personal one.

Since moving to the U.S. in my 20s, I've become an American citizen without diluting my Indian identity. I straddle these two worlds, and I'm proud to belong to both, my country of origin and the country that is now my home. And so, when I think about the pain and loss and trauma experienced by American victims of the scam, I have a visceral reaction to it.

It feels like some of my people, granted a vanishingly tiny minority, are dehumanizing some of my other people. One morning during our interviews in Houston with the DHS agents, Dylan and I talked about this. It's the largest cross-cultural communication ever to take place. They have made millions of calls from India, right? That's an amazing thing that they have communicated

that many times, yet people are receiving it negatively, right? What does that do to future dialogue, future communications between Americans and Indians, right? That is something I've thought about myself. You know, I'm married to a white American woman who was born here, and we've had this conversation, and this is why it sort of became personal for me,

because my friends that I went to college with, you know, many of them hold top positions in the tech industry and the finance industry here. And we've sort of, we've tried to build a reputation for India in this country, which is why whenever I talk to Indian government officials about this issue, I, you know, I keep repeating what a big mistake they're making in not taking it seriously.

that it's ultimately not only costing American victims, you know, billions of dollars, but in the long term, it is causing incalculable damage to this relationship between the two countries. You've been listening to Scam Likely. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment.

Scam Likely was produced and written by Eric Benson, Johnny Kaufman, and me, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. Callie Hitchcock and Yvonne Lai-Tremuin were our associate producers. The show was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. Sound design and original music by Mark McAdam. Additional music by Samba Jean-Baptiste. Special thanks to Campside's operations team, Aliyah Papes and Doug Slavin.

The executive producers at Campside are Matt Scher, Vanessa Gregoriadis, Josh Dean, and Adam Hoff.