Techie HACKS into Gurugram-based call center, catches scammers in action
In a weird development, a UK-based man has caught a whole team of scammers red-handed. Jim Browning hacked into a call center based out of Gurugram, India, and got hard evidence exposing the fraudsters at work, BBC reported. He even gathered video evidence, showing the scammers tricked people around the world into paying thousands of pounds per month. Here's all about it.
Scams have been growing in India and abroad
Every year, millions of people are targeted by scammers posing as officials from banks, computer companies, retailers, and even from the government. They promise various non-existing services/benefits - from technical support to foreign trips - and ask for a certain sum from the unsuspecting individual on the other side. And then, when the person pays, they simply vanish with no way to track/locate them.
Jim Browning decided to get back at scammers
As a number of phishing/vishing frauds are targeted at people in the UK, Browning, a vigilante reporting online scams, decided to come up with a way to get back at the con artists. He noted that most of the scams in his country were originating from a call center based in Gurugram and decided to hack into the place.
He hacked call center's CCTV cameras, calls
In May 2019, Browning covertly broke into the call center by hacking their CCTV cameras and telephone calls. He then spied on the fraudsters, watching their whole operation in action for several months. This included everything, starting from how the scammers posed as Microsoft's technical support staff to how they tricked unsuspecting individuals, including those from the UK, into paying money.
Browning himself called the scammers
Notably, during the spying observation, Browning himself called the scammers to see how far they can go. In that interaction, the man threw trick questions at the scammer posing as a Microsoft representative and noted that he immediately resorted to Google to answer.
Recently, BBC reported the sting, leading to police action
After gathering CCTV footage showing the scammers in action as well as over 70,000 calls to potential victims, Browning provided all that data to BBC Panorama. The sting was published by the outlet, following which Haryana Police came into action and busted the call center. The authorities have also registered a criminal case against the leader of the operation, Amit Chauhan, and his partners.
