Call Center scams rampant as police raid stories hit Siliguri news.

 

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Many call centers that operate in and around the Siliguri region have been linked to fraud and scam operations. They prey on the ignorance of the clients and use fake technical support and fake customer support as methods to get money from their clients. Majority of their victims seem to be aged and retired people who have low technical understanding and large bank accounts to scam. The Police and Investigation Bureaus have been working hard to eradicate such operations, however it seems that when they shut down one, two more take its place.  

Beginning and growth of fake call centers and scams in India.

If we look at the Google search traffic for the term "fake call center" in the past ten years we see that there is a massive spike during 2012.  

This is due to the story of one Sagar Thakkar who was also known as "Shaggy". He was responsible for a large scale call center scam that managed to extract nearly 300 million dollars primarily from aged and retired Americans. He had famously bought Virat Kohli's Audi for his girlfriend after she had repeatedly tried to kill herself. 

It seems his techniques laid the blueprint for future fraud call center operations in India.

• It starts with recruitment of gullible employees from social media. These people usually have little to no experience or qualifications and therefore are easier to hire. 
• Then Thakkar managed to convince the employees that they were working for the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America. He gave them a script and asked them to extort money and issue threats on behalf of the IRS.
• They were trained in illegal call centers at Mira Road, Mumbai. By using VoI P software they were able to make calls to people in America using +911 coded numbers. This further increased their "legitimacy".
• Then employees would harass and scam Americans for huge amounts of money. They were trained to deal with any resistance from the people and to be stern and firm in their approach. Threats and extortion were common practices.

Information sourced from here.

Retaliation from US Govt, Indian authorities and Youtubers.

According to the FBI, US citizens have lost an estimated 16.2 billion dollars to Indian scams and frauds over the last two years. Therefore naturally they have been putting pressure on the Indian Government to shut down such operations. The FBI has even appointed a representative especially for this matter at the US embassy in India to work with Indian Police and Interpol. However despite the best efforts of the US and India combined they have not managed to put a dent in the scam industry of India. Reports show that technical support scams have increased by 137% in the last year alone [2022]. It seems that for every call center they shut down, two more take its place.

An interesting development is the participation of independent Youtube creators and personalities in the investigation and shutting down of fake call centers. Creators like Mark Rober and Scammer Payback have worked diligently to do their best to annoy and shut down fake call centers.

As you can see they use powerful software and techniques to infiltrate the computers of the scammers. They delete important files of the scammers. Access personal files and photos and send it to them and generally make the life of the scammer very difficult. Such channels have been very successful in shutting down numerous fake call centers and disrupting the operations of many more. They work closely with the Indian authorities and provide information such as location of call centers and proof of fraud. 

Mark Rober recently worked closely with Kolkata Police to shut down a fake call center. They even gas bombed some of the offices and have been instrumental in shutting down these centers.

West Bengal Police Raids Fake Call Centre after American YouTuber Uncovers Racket 

Scammer Payback in particular has a running network of informants in numerous fake call centers. They provide him information and the insider knowledge to mess around with the bosses and scammers that are profiting from innocent elderly people. It is extremely entertaining to watch and also quite cathartic if you have ever been a victim of such a scam or fraud. 

Warning ! Content contains inappropriate language.

Scam call centers in Siliguri region and recent raids. 

In the latter half of 2022, West Bengal Police shut down nearly 26 call centers in Salt Lake, Kolkata and Siliguri Metropolitan Area. 

The offices of these centers are usually located in office buildings of reputed companies who rent out a few floors to outside companies. This gives the fake call center a camouflage behind the façade of the reputed company. Employees are usually young people who are proficient in English but otherwise have no skills or qualifications. This makes them ideal to work in such institutions as they receive high salaries for a relatively easy job. Salaries start from 15 to 20 thousand rupees a month and can reach almost 80 thousand a month for managers and floor operators. 

One interesting factor is the impermanence of such facilities. A fake call center will remain operational for no longer that 6-8 months after which numerous complaints from people scammed and fear of getting raided force them to shut down. The set up is shut down and wrapped up and relocated in a new location under a new name with new employees. This phenomenon is known as 'mushrooming' and makes it extremely difficult for authorities to successfully decrease such activity in a given area.

A recent example of such was the raid on R Voice Digital Media call center in Punjabipara, Siliguri. Sagar Saxena was the mastermind behind this operation and is currently providing valuable information under police custody. Along with him 29 employees were caught, 21 of whom were female. 

Another recent large scale bust was that of a washing machine scam call center in Siliguri. The call center operates under different names, including SAC and HAS, RH International, PP Enterprises, and Digital Leads, all owned by one man named Manmeet Singh. They had almost 4000 employees and according to sales databases had clients numbering in the high tens of thousands. [source]

Most of the employees are members of the youth who are yet unsure of their careers. They have just graduated from schools and colleges under generic Humanities subjects and thus have very few career opportunities in today's skill oriented job market. 

Many of the employees are recent students and thus live by themselves. They take these jobs in the hope of sustaining themselves for a few months but the lucrative salary makes them stick around for longer. 

The time spent at the call center cannot be used as job experience in more legitimate companies and they learn no valuable skills or techniques that help them develop their resume. Thus they are forced to go back to work in fraud call centers which creates an internal employment cycle.

Until and unless the employees themselves have a realization and stop working in such institutions, no real progress can be made. The approach needs to be two fold with authorities cracking down on call centers and employees quitting and moving on creating a shortage of employment for the fraud call centers. This will decrease the profitability of such operations and thus decrease such activities.

The best case scenario for such employees is having wasted a few years trying to get easy money, with a heavy conscience of having scammed innocent people of their life savings and with no real valuable experience or skills to enter any industry. 

The worst case scenario is rotting in a jail cell wondering where it all went wrong. 

Written by Ariyaan Moktan