The Assam Police cracked down on eight fake customer service centres across Guwahati in an overnight operation, detaining 191 people in what senior police officials say is a case of fraud at an international scale.

The police carried out raids simultaneously in eight locations on the intervening night of September 14 and 15, and detained 191 people. Of these, the police arrested 51, and served notices to the rest and directed them to cooperate with the police investigation.

Three of the arrested have been identified as “masterminds” by the police: Debajyoti Dey, 31 originally from Assam’s Karimganj district, Rajan Sidana, 39, from Punjab’s Ludhiana and Divyam Arora, 31, from Delhi.

According to Guwahati Commissioner of Police Diganta Barah, this crackdown is “only the tip of the iceberg” of a complex operation, which mostly targeted people in North America.

The police said the accused scammed people by impersonating technical support staff by originating ‘tech support’ pop-ups in personal computers to get the victims to call them.

“They would not call their victims but get their victims to call them. The victims would get a pop-up on their computers with messages that their anti-virus software has expired. Then when people would look for a toll-free number for support, they would find a fake toll-free number planted in search engines and call,” said Barah.

“Once they call, they are told that their personal data is at risk and that they would need to download software, for which they would need to make a payment. They would be told that they could either buy a gift card voucher and transfer it, or make a transfer to a Bitcoin wallet. They would hang up once the payment was made,” added Barah.

He said the operation involves other “international players” who take a cut and transfer the remaining in cash through ‘hawala channels’. He added that during peak season, the average monthly income of one such call centre with 50-60 employees would amount to Rs. 2 crore.

The police estimate these operations have been taking place in Guwahati for more than two years with the help of local support enabling them to rent offices and lease internet connections against fake names.

Most of the 191 people who had been detained were callers who had been roped in under the pretext of job hiring and had been trained on how to speak to the victims, said police.

They added most of them were young men and women aged between 20-30 from Assam and neighbouring states such as Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura, but also included people from places such as Delhi, West Bengal, and Maharashtra.

“They were reached through ads put out on social media and hired after they were called to meet “recruiters”. These youngsters did not know that they were being called for criminal activities. They were educated, English-speaking youngsters who needed jobs to support their families, and were caught in the situation,” said Barah.