Terrorism from Indian Call Centers, ‘The Epidemic of Elder Fraud in America’

Non-State Terrorism from Indian Call Centers: The Epidemic of Elder Fraud in America

Duck bankruptcy 

In the summer of 2025, a single tweet by independent journalist Mike Cernovich ignited widespread discussion when he characterized the relentless wave of telephone scams targeting elderly Americans as a form of “non-state terrorism” that, in his view, warranted a military-level response. The post, which quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views, crystallized growing public frustration with what many now regard as one of the largest unaddressed transnational criminal enterprises operating against U.S. citizens.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice reported that American seniors lost more than $2.1 billion to fraud schemes, with a substantial portion of the damage traced to sophisticated call-center operations based primarily in India. These organizations impersonate government agents (IRS, Social Security Administration, Medicare), technical support representatives (Microsoft, Apple), bank security departments, and even grandchildren in distress. The psychological sophistication of the scams—often involving multiple scripted stages, fake caller IDs, forged documents sent by email, and prolonged grooming of victims—has led many observers to describe the activity as psychologically engineered elder abuse on an industrial scale.

By mid-2025 the pattern had become depressingly familiar: a victim in their 70s or 80s receives an alarming call claiming their computer is infected, their Social Security number is compromised, or a grandchild has been arrested. The caller, speaking fluent English with a practiced American accent, creates urgency and isolation. Once trust is established, the victim is guided through a series of escalating payments—gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, or reloadable debit cards—that are almost impossible to reverse. Many victims are drained of life savings before family members discover what has happened, frequently too late for meaningful recovery.

The August 2025 indictment of 61 individuals by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, many of them alleged members of large Kolkata-based call-center syndicates, represented the most significant law-enforcement action to date. Yet the sheer volume of operations, the rapid adaptation of scammers to new countermeasures, and the difficulty of extraditing suspects from India have left most experts skeptical that traditional policing alone can meaningfully reduce the threat.

Cernovich’s framing of the phenomenon as “non-state terrorism” deliberately pushes the rhetorical boundary. Terrorism is conventionally understood as ideologically motivated violence intended to create fear in a civilian population. Scam call centers, by contrast, are profit-driven and lack political or religious objectives. Nevertheless, the analogy gains force when one considers the scale of harm, the deliberate targeting of society’s most vulnerable members, the daily psychological terror inflicted on thousands of households, and the near-impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators. The comparison also highlights a perceived double standard: if a foreign-based group were launching comparable levels of sustained, economically devastating attacks on American soil using other methods, the national security apparatus would likely be mobilized far more aggressively.

Responses to the original post reflected the polarized and emotionally charged nature of the debate. Many American users shared heartbreaking stories of parents and grandparents who had been victimized multiple times, describing daily harassment that left elderly loved ones anxious, distrustful of telephones, and increasingly isolated. Others expressed raw anger, with calls ranging from severe economic sanctions against India to darkly humorous suggestions of precision airstrikes on known scam hubs. Indian users who engaged in the thread presented a more complicated picture: some condemned the scammers outright, while others pointed to systemic issues within India—corruption, underfunded police forces, political protection of certain operators, and the sheer difficulty of dismantling large, decentralized networks that can relocate within days.

The conversation ultimately exposed a painful asymmetry. For millions of elderly Americans, the threat is intensely personal and immediate. For the governments of both nations, the problem remains largely a low-priority diplomatic and law-enforcement issue. Until that gap narrows—whether through dramatically improved international cooperation, more aggressive disruption of money-laundering pipelines, or new technological countermeasures capable of stopping the calls before they reach American phones—the daily toll on the most vulnerable members of society will continue.

Whether one accepts the terrorism label or not, the underlying reality is stark: a massive, sustained transfer of wealth is occurring from elderly Americans to criminal organizations operating thousands of miles away, largely beyond the reach of current legal mechanisms. How the United States chooses to respond to this challenge in the years ahead may reveal as much about national priorities and the limits of sovereignty in the digital age as it does about the crime itself.