Indian student in US duped by fake ICE agents in $5,000 scam
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Harvard vs Trump: As fresh salvos are fired, international students live in anxiety and fear
An Indian student in the United States was tricked into paying $5,000 in gift cards by individuals pretending to be US immigration officers. The scammers convinced her that she had violated immigration laws and faced arrest and deportation , according to a report by Newsweek. Shreya Bedi , a Master's student in Human-Computer Interaction at Indiana University Bloomington, arrived in the US in 2022 on an F-1 student visa . She received a call on May 29 from someone claiming to be an officer from the US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The caller gave a name and badge number and asked her to verify the details on the official ICE website. The phone number matched what was listed for an ICE office in Maryland.Soon after, Bedi got a second call from someone posing as an officer from the Olympia Police Department. They told her there was a warrant for her arrest. She was warned that her phone was being monitored and she could not contact anyone else.'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 to Newsweek.(Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates)The callers instructed her to purchase Apple and Target gift cards worth $5,000 and share the codes with them. They claimed a police officer would collect the bond papers the next day, but the follow-up never came.'They put me through hours of psychological torture, making me believe I was going to be deported and arrested,' she added. The scammers also had detailed knowledge about her, including her entry into the US, her academic records, and the Indian city she came from.Bedi is now trying to recover her losses through a GoFundMe campaign. She advised other international students to be cautious. '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.''As international students, we don't fully understand how the system works here, which makes us easy targets. I feel embarrassed that I fell for this, but I want others to learn from my mistake,' Bedi told Newsweek.
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