The Cyber Crime Cell of Delhi Police busted ten illegal call centres running “International Tech Support Scams”. These call centres, operating from different places in the national Capital were targeting users of Microsoft Windows by fraudulently popping up a message on their screen stating that their systems have been hit by malware and in lieu of services, these fake call centres used to charge victims between 100-500 dollars.

According to Dr Anyesh Roy, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Cyber Crime Cel, they have filed an FIR after Microsoft India alleged that a large number of illegal call centres are running in Delhi who are targeting its users.

“During our initial investigation, ten such call centres were identified at the following locations — Rohini Sector-7, Janakpuri, Dwarka Mod, Kirti Nagar, Moti Nagar, Hari Nagar, Mahipalpur, Shahdara and Okhla Phase-II,” the DCP said.

“A police team raided these illegal call centres. So far 24 people, including the owners and team leaders, of these illegal call centres have been arrested incriminating evidence in the form of cheques from customers in the name of Microsoft Tech support, call recordings, virtual dialers, Microsoft Tech support training material, call log transcripts detailing the conversation with victims of fraud, payment gateway records, servers, were recovered and had been seized,” the DCP added.

Giving the details of their modus operandi, Roy said these illegal call centres primarily establish contact with consumers through three methods: ‘Cold-calling’ (unsolicited call to a consumer), ‘Internet search engine advertising’ and ‘Web browser pop-up messages’.

“Once they have established contact with the consumer, they persuade the consumer to allow them remote access to the consumer’s computer to diagnose the alleged problems on the computer. These centres tricks the consumer into believing the computer has serious malware infections,” said the DCP

“Stressing the risks to the consumer’s financial security as a result of the infections, the centres then sells a service, often a costly long-term subscription agreement, to fix the non-existent problem. Though these fake call centres primarily aim to sell a bogus service to fix a non-existent problem, they sometimes also remotely access financial and identity data from the consumer’s computer while “fixing” the problem and even install malware onto the consumer’s computer,” Roy added.