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Police in India have organized coordinated raids on dubious technical support centers. 100 officers descended at 16 different sites. The raids led to the arrest of 39 people who impersonated employees of Microsoft, HP, Dell, Google, and even Apple to trick victims abroad.
According to senior police superintendent Ajay Pal Sharma, the scammers “got money from thousands of victims, most of whom were Americans or Canadians.” Microsoft alone has received more than 7,000 complaints from its users.
Windows fraudulent support can be incredibly profitable. A recent Microsoft overclock in India said the average payment is usually between $ 150 and $ 499. Applying the average only to victims who reported the incident to Microsoft totaled more than $ 2.2 million.
These scammers pretended to be representatives of four other major technology companies, so this criminal enterprise could easily go to Europe. And this is only for victims who called to report the incident, or thought they were dealing with a legitimate service problem.
Many victims of technical support fraud - especially if they are older - do not want to talk about what happens after a fait accompli. This is a big reason why Microsoft and AARP joined forces back in 2016.
This latest raid is the second successful operation in just two months. In mid-October, authorities went down to 10 other call centers and made 24 arrests. Many evidence was seized, including call records, chat logs, and even scripts that fraudsters use to manipulate their potential victims.
Microsoft notes that over the past 12 months, nearly 60% of consumers interacted with scammers from technical support. It will be interesting to see how much will be done over the next 12 months.
