Con call centres thrive in shadow of BPO boom

A CALL CENTRE IN NCR FOOLS TARGETS INTO BELIEVING THEIR COMPUTERS WERE AT RISK UNTIL THEY BUY EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE

major companies in places such as Gurgaon, Pune and Bengaluru but are notoriously difficult to pin down because the victims are foreigners who can’t file police complaints in India, and the firms are often run out of flats or nondescript locations by a handful of people.

HT investigated one such Gurgaon-based call centre running a lucrative fraud in so-called tech support, one of the many forms of cyber scams that threaten to undermine India’s credibility as the world’s back office and make it a notorious centre of global fraud.

Past and present employees of Saburi TLC say their sole brief was to cheat customers into believing their computers were at a virus or hacking risk until they bought security solutions that cost hundreds of dollars. “We know there are no viruses. User ko to nahi pata (the user has no idea),” said Anshul*, an employee.

Testimonies of victims float on the internet, in tech blogs, chat rooms and even with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the United States’ consumer protection agency that investigated several Indian BPOs for fraud.

Ask Timothy Gatewood of Texas, United States. “I got a popup notice from Apple saying ‘you have virus infecting computer, call this number’. So I called the number, and it was some guy with an Indian accent,” the 53-year-old Houston-based DJ told Hindustan Times.

“He said he was a representative of Apple, and he’s with this company, Tech Live Connect. I paid them 200 dollars, all they did was delete a couple (of) files, and maybe put a couple (of) apps from the App store, and said, there you go, bada-boom badabing, 200-something dollars!”

Tech Live Connect’s call centre is run by Saburi TLC whose promoter and CEO Anuj Jain has heard of these complaints but denies that the blame lies with his company.

“Some of our ex-employees impersonate us, which is why you see the complaints,” Jain tells HT. But an HT investigation and interviews with former and present employees reveal a darker side of the 550-employee company.

Experts say the charges against Saburi TLC are the tip of an iceberg of rot in India’s showcase industry that attracts fresh graduates desperate for a job who don’t ask too many questions.

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