Police Raid Fake Call Centers in NCR, Several Tech Support Scammers Arrested

Police raided 16 fake call centers in two cities of Delhi-NCR and arrested over 30 tech support scammers who duped people across the world in the name of fixing non-existent malware on their systems. The raids happened after tech giant Microsoft sounded the police about the scams.

According to a report in the Times of India, the raids happened on Nov.27 and Nov.28 at Noida and Gurugram.

The police action comes after the India subsidiary of Microsoft filed a complaint with them alleging that fraudsters have duped its customers of large sums of money in the name of bogus tech support, added the report.

Microsoft got wind about the scam when it started receiving numerous complaints from its customers.

After getting numerous complaints, Microsoft conducted an internal probe and found that pop-up messages were being sent by some people to computers across the world, saying their system’s security is at risk.

The pop-up warned the user that their system has been attacked by a malware, which “if not rectified immediately, the systems would be at risk of getting seriously damaged or hacked, which may, in turn,  compromise personal and financial details,” the publication reported.

The New York Times has quoted Ajay Pal Sharma, Gautam Budh Nagar’s SSP as saying, “The modus operandi was to send a pop-up on people’s systems using a fake Microsoft logo.”

After seeing the message, many of the users called the call center number given with the message. These calls were connecting them to a center where fake tech experts used to claim themselves as Microsoft tech experts and tell the users that their system is under a virus attack.

Later these bogus tech experts offered them fixing packages ranging from $99 to $1,000. Most of the victims of these frauds were Americans and Canadians, added Sharma.

Courtney Gregoire, an assistant general counsel in Microsoft’s digital crimes unit, said these scams are widespread.

“The success of the legitimate industry has made it easier for the illegitimate industry there,” said Gregoire in New York Times report.

Shamsher Singh, ACP, (Crime), Gurugram Police, was cited as saying by Hindustan Times that more raids can take place based on interrogation with the arrested people.

Those arrested have been booked under various sections of IPC related to cheating, impersonation and relevant sections of the IT Act.