US team to visit India after ‘techies’ dupe Americans

LUCKNOW: An American team will visit India next month to probe cyber frauds, originating from the country, which have defrauded thousands of US citizens.

Tech frauds from Uttar Pradesh have been duping US citizens by ‘offering’ them technical support for removing virus or other malware from their computer systems for a price. They charge anything between $50 and $100. Shockingly, nearly 50,000 American nationals were duped this way by fraudsters operating from UP and other parts of India in 2015 alone.

These starting revelations were made after the UP special task force (STF) arrested six techies from Sector 63 of Noida on September 30 and unearthed a call centre run by them allegedly to operate their fraudulent activities. “The gang targeted Indian customers by offering them insurance bonus of private firms during the day time while at night they duped US citizens by offering them online technical support service,” said UP STF additional superintendent of police (ASP), Triveni Singh. A team from the US will visit India in November to probe the case, Singh said.

Bharat Bhaskar, IIM-Lucknow professor and expert in informational technology and systems, said the US is a favourite hunting ground for such tech support fraudsters as it has a bigger number of non-technical computer users who easily fall into the fraudsters’ trap. He said the fraudsters mostly target US nationals as they paid in dollars, the value of which is much higher than the rupee, adding that the fraudsters also had links with an international gang based in the US.