‘Fully trapped’: Indian student scams in us by scams, which were presented as snow officials, told them that they would be deported

Shreya Bedi, an Indian student, was cheated by scammers who were introduced as immigration officers who told her that she was violating the immigration laws. Imposters forced him to buy a gift card of $ 5000 as ‘bond’ payment to avoid arrest and exile. Newsweek reported that Bedi came to the US in 2022 in 2022 on a F -1 visa in 2022 to get a master’s degree in human -computer interaction at Indiana University Bloomington. Bedi said that she received a phone call on May 29, in which scammers, who posed as ice agents, told her that she was violating immigration laws and would be arrested and excluded. “He gave me his name and badge number and asked me to verify his office details to go to ice.gov and see the office in Maryland. I could confirm that this was the same phone number from which he was calling, “Bedi said.Scammers told Bedi that her phone was being monitored and she could not call anyone. Another scammer from the Olympia Police Department is called Poding, which was said to have a warrant to arrest. Bedi said, “I got completely stuck because they put me directly on the phone for three hours, repeatedly warned me that hanging or contacting someone would violate my case and make things worse. I was very scared to put it at risk,” Bedi said. Scammers asked him to buy Apple and target a total gift card of $ 5,000 and share the code on the phone. The scammers told him that a police officer would collect the card and bond paper the next day, but the call never came. “They put me through hours of psychological torture, causing me to believe that I am going to be deported and arrested,” Bedi said.Scammers knew everything about him, the port of his entry, academic background, from which city he is from in India. Bedi is now trying to raise money on Gofundme. “You always have the right to hang and call a lawyer, government agencies tell you almost never directly; they send the official mail,” he said. “No legitimate government agency will ever ask for gift cards, bank details or your social security number. If anyone asks for any of these things, it is definitely a scam.”“As international students, we do not fully understand how the system works here, which makes us the easy goal. I feel embarrassed that I fell for it, but I want other people to learn from their mistake.”