Bangalore: In an act that brought disgrace to numerous call centres in the country, U.S. officials on Wednesday said that they had shut down six “scareware” scammers, mostly operating from call centres in India.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), these scammers tricked tens of thousands of customers by making them believe their computers were infected, thereby forcing them to pay hundreds of dollars for removal of bogus viruses and non-existent spyware, after remotely accessing the victim’s computer.

The FTC as a part of its international crackdown on tech support scams, had partnered with its Canadian and Australian counterparts to track down the crooked call centres located across the globe. The investigation revealed that most of these centres are based in India and targets the English-speaking consumers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K. According to an independent research by The Guardian, most of these frauds are being run from call centres based in Kolkata.  

The scammers used virtual offices, more than 80 domain names and 130 phone numbers to run their operation without suspicion from consumers and law enforcers. The modus operandi is simple: A tech support person claiming to be with a trusted company, mostly Microsoft, Dell, McAfee or Norton, calls and tells a potential victim that their systems have been found to be infected with a virus or malware.