An indepth investigation by online vigilantes has exposed the activities of an Indian tech support scam centre.
Extraordinarily, fraudsters had the tables turned on them as YouTuber Jim Browning was able to hack into the call centre and access recordings of scam phone calls and even watch live CCTV footage exposing the criminals at work.
![Spying on the Scammers [Part 1/5]](https://grahamcluley.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fle71yVPh4uk%2F0.jpg)
Jim’s videos make for fascinating viewing.
Browning and fellow YouTuber Karl Rock teamed up with BBC Panorama this week to expose the goings-on at Faremart Travel Private Limited, a company running out of Gurugram, south west of Delhi.
I’m sure some will have reservations about the legality of vigilantes accessing the scammers’ CCTV footage and recordings without permission, but then you watch a video like this…
In the above video, Karl Rock shares the audio recording of a 13-year-old girl who finds herself the victim of a tech support scam.
It’s heartbreaking, and truly hard to watch all the way through. I don’t know the scammers can sleep at night, and they deserve to be locked up.
On which note, good news. According to Rock, Indian police raided the premises of Faremart Travel Private Limited in Gurugram, within hours of the videos being released.
INDIAN POLICE RAIDED the Creepy Call Centre 🚨 BIG NEWS! @Jim Browning https://t.co/ZyIYnUa1T6
— Karl Rock (@iamkarlrock) March 4, 2020
If you believe that you are a victim of the call centre, please contact Indian police via email at [email protected].
Outstanding!
It's simple – if you answer the phone and the caller sounds like a "Indian Call Centre" all you say is –
"Sorry, we do not take calls from Indian call centres due to the large number of scams coming out of India" and then put the phone down.
Simple trick which does 2 good things – 1) you do not get scammed 2) legitimate Indian call centres lose business and this causes companies to bring call centres back to Europe and North America etc.. which may force Indian authorities to clamp down on scam call centres in India (or not, really doesn't matter if we all refuse to speak to Indian call centres).
Your media gave only half the news by telling you that only Indians (Bhartiya) are scamming people around the world. Remember, most of these scammers are not from India but from the Islamic republics around India.
But your media also describes them as Indian.
And they have learned all these techniques from Westerners. Meaning, scams will still happen because there is a good racket of fraudsters in your country.
Many Indians fall under the scams of American people and because of that they lose thousands of US dollars. This will never be told by your media because by hyper-sensitising the news of 'Indian only scammers' gives them more views. And by this can centralize all your negative feelings towards a specific community or nation.
It is happening historically and the trend is going on because in the eyes of christian every non-cristians is a demon, isn't it.
You have a good idea to bring back jobs (every nationalist should have such ideas) but I hope you will try to apply the same idea to China as they are the one who offered jobs by western companies. What do you think the entire call-centre business of western companies is situated in India? There are also call centres in countries like Japan and Korea.
Another thing is to ask your government to stop companies that come to our country to hire talented people.
@Lakshay Sharma
Leigh was right and what you said is simply not true. Most scammers are based in Delhi, and other wealthy parts of India. Not only does India have a major scammer problem, but they also have a class problem. There is extreme poverty in poor parts of India. Those folk do not get to participate in scams because theft in India makes big money. Since local police are 'in on the action' and the government chooses to ignore it. Scambaiters will continue to expose the corruption in India until it is addressed.
Anyway, the media didn't give us "half the story". The fact is nearly all the phone scams us UK folks get originate from India. Almost anyone online, including YouTubers who scambait for a living, have also found that when they probe into any scams other than 419, such as Tech Support Scams, IRS scams, CRA scams, HMRC scams, police scams where they have 'found an abandoned car', etc, etc,, almost all of these scams originate from populous parts of India.
The Indian government must deal with the problem, or quite simply, India will get no respect from the world and will not get business.
I do not recommend anyone uses Indian call centres for business, as quite frankly, due to the large amount of scams running with stolen customer details from companies like TalkTalk, you don't have any guarantee that they're not running a back-office scam with your customer's details.
We’re you working for same or similar company? Appears so the way you defend the cheats and scammers.
Need to clean dirt? Start from your own home first and don't blame media for this..use your own research instead.
I am Indian living, travel often for work in India. It's really unfortunate that most of these calls are coming from Delhi & Calcutta. My company have worked with Canadian police & FBI to bring these scammers down. They apprehended more than 40 scammers with $5+ Million in funds. There are scammers out there in different countries and every country should work in collaboration to clean these scammers out from the system.