Indian police bust U.S.-targeted tech support scam, arrests five
KOLKATA, INDIA — Kolkata Police raided a fraudulent call center on Park Street, arresting five individuals accused of scamming United States residents by impersonating major tech firms as reported by The Indian Express.
Scam operations targeting U.S. citizens
Ashutosh Ray made calls to impersonate the official tech support of various companies and persuaded victims to allow the accused to take remote control of their computers.
“They made Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls to residents in the United States, impersonating tech support and utility service providers such as PayPal, Norton, and McAfee. They then allegedly cheated victims by remotely accessing their computers and siphoning money,” a police official said.
They would drain resources, and they upheld an appearance of legitimacy using prewritten scripts and phony credentials.
In caller ID spoofing, perpetrators could intimidate targets by employing high-pressure methods, which would lead targets to believe that their accounts had been hacked and that they would soon be granted remote access to address non-existent problems. Such an approach is popular among tech-support scammers, whose fear frequently overrides doubt.
Legal crackdown on rising cyber fraud
Law enforcement officials have seized laptops, cell phones, and routers that contained records of dialers and remote access tools. The case illustrates how fraudsters exploit international boundaries by targeting foreign victims to complicate the legal jurisdiction.
The case has been entered under various laws, including Sections 66, 66C, 66D, 84B, and 43 of the Information Technology Act, as well as the recently established Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which governs the punishment of cybercrime.
The charges are related to cheating by personation, forgery, and unauthorized access, indicating increased attention from the authorities to digital fraud.
The arrests are an indication that the authorities are taking steps to reduce cross-border frauds that have taken advantage of poor international law enforcement coordination.
Avoiding fake call centers
Such frauds usually incorporate the element of urgency, where people are tricked into giving access by informing them of supposedly fraudulent behavior or an expired subscription. In Kolkata, ready written scripts had been used to impersonate authentic support agents, a common tactic employed by rogue call centers.
To prevent these scams, the public can take some protective measures, such as:
- Verify: Call the company through its official websites or customer care number
- Security software: Install a good antivirus
Authorities continuously advise the public to stay vigilant and always verify the identity of any caller before responding to avoid fraud.
