‘Felt completely trapped’: Indian student scammed in US by imposters who posed as ICE officers, told her she would be deported
Shreya Bedi, an Indian student, was deceived by scammers who posed as immigration officers who told her that she was violating immigration laws. The imposters forced her into purchasing $5000 worth of gift cards as ‘bond’ payments to avoid arrest and deportation. Bedi came to the US on an F-1 visa in 2022 to pursue a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction at Indiana University Bloomington, Newsweek reported. Bedi said she received a phone call on May 29 in which the scammers who posed as ICE agents told her that she was violating immigration laws and would be arrested and deported. “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.The scammers told Bedi that her phone was being monitored and she could not call anyone. A second scammer called posing to be from the Olympia Police Department saying that there was a warrant for her arrest. “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,” Bedi said. The scammers asked her to buy Apple and Target gift cards totaling $5,000 and to share the codes over the phone. The scammers told her a police officer would collect the cards and bond papers the next day, but that call never came. “They put me through hours of psychological torture, making me believe I was going to be deported and arrested,” Bedi said.The scammers knew everything about her, her port of entry, academic background, which city in India she is from etc. Bedi is now trying to raise funds on GoFundMe. “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.”
