Caught on camera, the scammers who f leece UK victims
Hacker spies on swindlers through CCTV in India
Horrifying footage shows the crooks tricking people into thinking their computers are infected with pornography then charging to ‘fix’ them.
Working from an office near delhi, rows of swindlers used Western aliases like Mary and Chris Lawson to convince their targets they were genuine.
Crime ringleader amit Chauhan was filmed chuckling as he told staff: ‘We don’t give a **** about the customers.’
Other fraudsters sniggered at one victim who wept and told how he feared the costly ‘repairs’ would give him a heart attack.
the footage comes almost a year after the Mail infiltrated a fake HMrC call centre in India and secretly filmed scammers targeting 10,000 Britons a day and threatening them with jail unless Fraudsters at an Indian scam call centre have been filmed mocking British victims as they fleece them out of thousands of pounds. they repaid non-existent tax bills. despite our expose, Britons remain the prime target for international phone scammers with 21million calls a month.
the latest footage emerged after a British hacker broke in to the Indian scam centre’s CCtV to spy on the tricksters targeting victims. using the name Jim Browning, he also obtained recordings of 70,000 phone calls as the crooks fleeced Britons from a delhi suburb.
the footage, passed to the BBC’s Panorama, showed scammers placing a fake pop-up warning message on people’s computers claiming they have been infected with pornographic spyware.
they are told to phone Microsoft for urgent technical support.
Victims who called the number, which had nothing to do with Microsoft, were charged hundreds of pounds to ‘fix’ their computer.
In reality, the warning message would have disappeared if they switched their machine off.
the scam, which also targets people in the us and australia makes the call centre around £370,000 a month. social media photos show Chauhan living a lavish lifestyle and enjoying holidays including Las Vegas.
dave Matika, a British victim of the call centre, said the scammer he spoke to kept saying people had been trying to watch child porn via his computer.
‘that just kept frightening me, so I actually believed I had to buy a firewall just to save my computer and save my name really,’ he added. ‘He kept making me think like he was a good friend of mine.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but he just made it so easy.’
Panorama also claimed PayPal failed to close a fraudster’s account despite being warned he was using it to rip people off.
Cash from some victims went directly into Chauhan’s PayPal account. One payment came from Briton Perry adams, who said he warned PayPal he feared he had been scammed and explained what had happened. ‘they said that it was not a problem, they would refund the money and they would take up the issue on my behalf and investigate it,’ he said.
the cash was refunded but eight months later the fraudster was still using his account to cash in, Panorama reported.
sameer sharma, from delhi police, admitted the crimes were ‘difficult to crack’.
He said: ‘Because we don’t have victims, we [therefore] don’t have accused and [that means] we don’t have anything. It’s very difficult to link the accused with the victim. It’s even difficult to find out who is the accused.’
PayPal said it could not comment on the case but remains committed to protecting customers.
a spokesman said: ‘We take this responsibility very seriously and use advanced fraud and risk management tools to keep our customers and payments safe.’