The Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has registered an FIR on the complaint of Microsoft Corporation India, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation USA ,after the software giant alleged that two call centres from Delhi have been duping US citizens of huge sums of money impersonating as Microsoft business partners or Microsoft Authorised technical service providers.
On December 31 the complaint to police was made by Vinita lamba, who is the Attorney of Microsoft corporations India. Microsoft Corporation USA received many complaints from US citizens about the cheating incidents. In her complaint, she stated the name of two BPOs/ Call centres Webon Flex Marketing Pvt limited and Webronics solutions Pvt limited respectively.
She identified the accused as Mohit Sharma, Manish Sharma and Chandni Chadha, the CEO, director and HR of Webon Flex Marketing respectively. Manish Sharma and one Prashant Sharma have been also been named in the FIR as the director of Webronics solutions.
lamba alleged that the modus operandi of the BPOs was to send false pop up messages to the US citizens stating that their computer is infected with computer viruses and other security-related risks and if not rectified immediately, their computer could get damaged and their banking and other personal details might get hacked.
The pop up message would show messages like "Security breach on your computer, call 855-390-4349 for Microsoft support or else computer would crash" and sometimes there would be audio pop ups asking them to reach Microsoft on 855-603-4678.
The victims would then follow the command prompts or the website links stated in such pop up messages and end up sharing his/her contact details with the agents of the fraudulent companies.
The agents of the fake companies would then call from their call centres and impersonate themselves as experts from technical team of Microsoft and induce the victim into paying huge sums of money for bogus services.
"This way the employees working at the call centres obtain remote control to the computers of innocent individuals in USA. There is a strong apprehension that these companies can commit data theft, identity theft and transmit computer viruses," alleged lamba. lamba further said that Microsoft does not carry out such process/calls or transmit pop up messages to its customers.
An FIR (No.200/2016) regarding the matter was registered under sections 420,467,468,471,120B,34 and 66C,66D IT Act at Cyber Cell of Delhi Police. No arrests have been made so far and the case is being investigated, said a senior police official.