Or...it's a relatively easy job with little risk and a good opportunity for upside? If you are sufficiently lacking in morals? Frankly, I consider it just as much 'casual racism' to say "poor Indians, they have no choice but to commit crime because things are so bad where they are"; that's stereotyping too.

I have to deal with way too many of these folks (it's not just from India...Nigeria, Eastern Europe, etc). Let's break this down a bit: we aren't talking about people for whom the only alternative is begging in the street or something. They're literate in English. They've had some education. They're mentally nimble enough to run the scam. They work in an office. And they are deliberately seeking to manipulate and defraud the weakest in society. These are folks with options, not either being a criminal or selling organs to feed themselves.

So perhaps it makes me a bad person, or insufficiently compassionate. Or something. But I've been to Hyderabad and Lagos and a bunch of other places and seen people who really have no options. So I can't quite gin up forgiveness for someone who is targeting the feeble, the more feeble the better, for fraud, and would consider taking everything they had a success.

The same can be said for drug dealers, or mob enforcers, or any number of other jobs that prey on other people. While it may explain why they're doing what they're doing, it doesn't excuse it.

To be clear, I'm talking about the people perpetrating these scams, not any racial group; Indians or otherwise.

Sorry but absolutely no pity for these scum