Indian authorities arrest call centre scammers in India targeting Canadians

Indian authorities have arrested 32 people for being involved in the use of call centres scamming Canadians for money.

Deputy police commissioner Sameer Sharma said that the call centres were specifically targetting Canadian citizens and the department was made aware of the situation on November 15th.

On November 17th, the police arrested the individuals and also seized 55 computers and 35 phones, CTV News reported.

Sharma said that the police found several scam calls in progress that showed computer screens with Canadian phone numbers. Three supervisors of the call centre were also present.

“The supervisors…were asked about the activity going on there but they could not give any satisfactory answer,” Sharma said in a recent statement.

“On sustained questioning, they divulged that they were engaged in calling [Canadians] and impersonating [themselves] as genuine Canadian police.”

Scam calls have risen in the country over the past several months. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has given a deadline for big telecom carriers to have better technology to detect and block nefarious calls.

Until this technology is introduced, there really is no way of knowing if a call is a scam or not. MobileSyrup recently wrote how you can deal with scam calls and the best way to block them.

The individuals arrested in India were in breach of the Indian Telegraph Act, Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act and Information Technology Act, CTV reported.

The police added that the calls were made using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a process in which a scammer can make calls over the internet. The scammer can use a website to generate a number that looks like a genuine number to call someone else.

According to CTV, the authorities are aware that one Canadian was duped out of $13,500 CAD.

Source: CTV News