Microsoft and Amazon tip India's law enforcement on tech support call center fraudsters

[brochi]

Cutting corners: Amazon and Microsoft have collaborated with India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to bust fake tech support centers that affected over 2,000 of their customers, mainly in the United States. These fraudulent agents deployed pop-up messages to deceive victims by alleging non-existent PC issues and then persuading them to make payments to have those problems fixed.

Recently, India's federal enforcement agency disclosed that they had executed several raids aimed at curbing organized cyber-enabled financial offenses. The operation, dubbed "Chakra-II," emerged from a joint crime referral supported by both Amazon and Microsoft. It spanned five unique cases and covered 76 locations across multiple states: Delhi, West Bengal, Kerala, Haryana, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh.

In the wake of the operation, the investigative body seized 32 mobile phones, 33 SIM cards, multiple USB flash drives, 48 laptops/hard disks, and snapshots of two servers. They also froze several bank accounts and seized 15 email accounts.

CBI LAUNCHES OPERATION CHAKRA-II TO COMBAT AND DISMANTLE ORGANIZED CYBER ENABLED FINANCIAL CRIMES;
DURING NATIONWIDE CRACKDOWN, SEARCHES CONDUCTED AT AROUND 76 LOCATIONS; LARGE NUMBER OF DIGITAL GADGETS INCLUDING LAPTOPs, HARD DISC ETC RECOVERED pic.twitter.com/0Jx1DdQ2o9

– Central Bureau of Investigation (India) (@CBIHeadquarters) October 19, 2023

This national crackdown promoted intelligence sharing with the CBI, bringing to light two cases of international tech support fraud where the accused operated several call centers across five states, masquerading as technical support representatives.

These illicit call centers were designed to mimic Microsoft and Amazon customer support, targeting over 2,000 customers primarily in the United States but also in other countries like Spain, Australia, Germany, Canada, and the UK.

The agency stated that this tech support scam had been ongoing for approximately five years. The fraudsters utilized multiple international payment gateways and channels to move their funds. Victims were presented with pop-up messages seemingly originating from Microsoft or other genuine tech vendors, claiming their computers had technical issues. These messages contained toll-free numbers, which allowed the fraudsters to impersonate tech support representatives to later access the victims' computers remotely. The culprits then manipulated the unsuspecting users to make payments for the non-existing problems.

The FBI notes that scams involving tech support and government impersonation result in losses exceeding $1 billion annually. A significant portion of these scams originates from call centers in South Asia, predominantly India.

This crackdown marks the inaugural collaboration between the two tech giants to challenge such criminal endeavors. Microsoft states that its cooperation with law enforcement agencies has already disrupted tech support fraud, leading to over 30 call center raids and more than 100 arrests. The tech firm encourages other entities to join this collective effort against these illicit practices.

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) specializes in probing tech support fraud and liaises with law enforcement accordingly. In contrast, Amazon offers a platform for users to report suspicious communication directly to them. As tech-enabled fraud remains a threat to both companies, their partnership might symbolize a sustained pledge to tackle these continually evolving and proliferating scams.

Image credit: DCstudio

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100581-microsoft-amazon-tip-india-law-enforcement-tech-support.html

 

[PEnnn]

These scam have been affecting people for at least 10 years now.

And now, suddenly and finally, Amazon and MS woke up from their stupor and lethargy to alert the authorities???

 

[ComputerGuy55]

These scam have been affecting people for at least 10 years now.

And now, suddenly and finally, Amazon and MS woke up from their stupor and lethargy to alert the authorities???

I agree, it's certainly a "Too little, too late" response to this. I've had to go through the unfortunate affects of these scams with several customers over the years.

It is amazing though, how so many of them want to believe what these scammers are saying, even after telling them that they are scammers and will say anything to try and get you to pay them money.

 

[brucek]

Glad to see that enforcement is finally being stepped up against this large criminal industry at least in a few instances. I wonder how this change of direction was brought to bear and hope it can continue.

There are plenty of YouTubers who will tell you all about these scams, including down to individual scammer names, photographs, locations (including locations of entire call centers.) It seems that generally it doesn't go anywhere though, I suspect because local law enforcement is cut in on the proceeds. Maybe someone with teeth is finally exerting sufficient pressure so that national politicians can no longer look the other way.

 

[toooooot]

They still do it? I got a call from someone with very thick Indian accent regarding tech support many years ago. I was not aware about this scam back then.
I do have a question though. Does India want to close these centers?
I mean they are scamming foreigners, not their own people.
People work, pay taxes, why bother?

 

[brucek]

I mean they are scamming foreigners, not their own people.
People work, pay taxes, why bother?

Because the India economy benefits massively from legitimate economic trade with the same countries whose citizens are being fleeced at industrial scale by these scam operations, and eventually those countries are going to tell India to choose whether it wants to keep its much larger legitimate business interests or the much smaller illegitimate one. I suspect just a tiny bit of that conversation, in soft diplomatic tones, already started happening behind the scenes. By this point every US elected official must have heard countless complaints from their constituent families of elders who suffered real financial hardship over this.

That said, even without that external pressure, I do also think a great many regular Indian citizens are also annoyed by these jerks, the same way criminals are not well liked in most any country. That general pressure may not be enough to overcome a single well-bribed local police chief especially when the activity is suitably behind the scenes, but probably adds up at the national level, where its much harder to pay everyone off at once.

 

[mailpup]

People work, pay taxes, why bother?

Maybe they don't pay taxes.

 

[Vanderlinde]

I cleaned this mess up one day on a clients computer. It was a basic Remote Desktop thing that would allow those folks from India to watch realtime activity on that computer. It stinks. And the biggest culprit to this is obvious the programs like Google, Meta and what more that allow the advertising of such practices in the first place. ZERO Checks are done, you can ramp up fake AI generated content into any of the programs now with zero humans looking into it if that is morally right or wrong. They don't care.

People need to start using adblockers on the mass. Ublock origin, Adblocker. The more the better. This is how you even for people who are not good with computers stop this nonsense from going on. They cannot solve it, so we should solve it.