Indian Police Bust Cybersecurity Scam Call Center

While most companies use contact centers to support customers and expand their business opportunities, the technology is sometimes used for nefarious purposes. Like any tool, call centers can be used for fraud.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, losses from scam call centers are on the rise, especially those scams that invent a cybersecurity “problem” and extort money to fix the non-existent problem. The FBI noted that the total losses reported by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. A Harris poll conducted last year that surveyed 2,000 American adults revealed that 22 percent of respondents reported that they had lost money to a phone-based scam in the past year.

Many, though not all, of these scam call centers are originating in India. This week, police in Delhi, India arrested 12 people who were reportedly running a fake call center that fraudulently took money from call recipients in the U.S. and Canada for the purpose of fraudulent cybersecurity. Victims were duped into paying for the fake services via gift cards that were redeemed in U.S.-based bank accounts of these foreigners, according to the Delhi police. The police raid of the scam call center yielded 19 computers, 13 mobile phones, two internet routers, one switch, the “script” used by the scammers, telecommunication software, VOIP-calling dialers and incriminating data in computers and mobiles.

“The accused used to dupe foreigners living in the USA and Canada in the name of cyber-security,” said Delhi police in a statement. “They cheated innocent foreign nationals on the false pretext of providing them technical support by posing as technical support staff of Amazon. The accused used their pop-up vendors to send fake pop-ups to the foreign residents saying, ‘ransomware detected', 'security warning', 'hacking/compromising of Amazon account' etc. They instructed people to call up the number put up on the pop-ups to get the security threats resolved in exchange for a payment.”

The accused have been charged under sections 34, 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC (News - Alert)) and 66C/66D sections of the country’s IT Act. 

Edited by Luke Bellos