NCCIA warns youth against joining illegal call centres for lucrative salaries

Why This Matters

Key context: <p>ISLAMABAD: The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) on Saturday warned that loopholes in the existing system are being exploited by <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/2042369">illegal call centres</a>, online betting operators and international fraud networks to launder money and trap victims.</p> <p>Addressing a press conference, NCCIA (Islamabad/Rawalpindi) Additional Director Muhammad Shoaib Khan said fake companies were being registered with weak verification, after which bank accounts opened in their names were integrated with loan apps, betting and gaming portals to receive and transfer illicit funds.</p> <p>Therefore, he called for stricter rules on company registration and bank account verification.</p> <p>The press conference was primarily called to warn educated youths against becoming involved in cybercrime by joining illegal call centres in pursuit of lucrative salaries, urging those seeking jobs with call centres to ask their employers where they are registered and appealing to parents to check whether their children were working at an illegal call centre carrying out scams, fraud or other illicit activities.</p> <figure class='media w-full sm:w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/2042779'> <div class='media__item media__item--newskitlink '> <iframe class="nk-iframe" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="height:250px;position:relative" src="https://www.dawn.com/news/card/2042779" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms"></iframe></div> </figure> <p>“Ask them what documents the company has, what registration it operates under, which company they work for, which company is providing the loans, where the money is coming from and who is putting money into these applications,” Khan said.</p> <p>Acknowledging that young people and university students were engaging in such jobs because the salaries were higher than average, he noted that they risked ending up becoming part of the entire trap and operation.</p> <p>“If your son or daughter is arrested in such an operation, the FIR (first information report) becomes part of their record. Tomorrow, when they need a character certificate or apply for a government job, that record can affect them,” the NCCIA officer warned.</p> <p>He said the issue concerns merchant accounts provided by banks and the accounts into which money is deposited. A bank account is linked to a company that may already have been registered despite weaknesses in proper verification, standard operating procedures or the <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="link--external" href="https://www.lseg.com/en/risk-intelligence/glossary/kyc/kyc-process">Know Your Customer</a> (KYC) process.</p> <p>“After the company has been registered, the bank opens an account for it. The operators then take that company’s bank account and integrate it with their online betting or gaming portal,” Khan said, adding that the NCCIA team is working on recommendations to these institutions so that they improve their checking systems.</p> <p>The additional director said the agency already raised the issue with senior officials at the policy level, and loopholes identified during investigations and interrogations are brought to light so they can be addressed.</p> <p>He said the NCCIA wants to address cases where one-person companies or similar companies were registered and their bank accounts were subsequently used in this way.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Khan said that the NCCIA identified the role and other details of each individual involved: who used which computer, what their role was, the extent of their involvement, who trapped victims, made the calls and edited the material.</p> <p>“We do not treat everyone as having played the same role. After establishing those roles, we prepare the proper FIR and proceed accordingly,” he explained.</p> <p>The NCCIA additional director noted the agency raided two call centres in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Zone over the past three days.</p> <p>In the Rawalpindi raid, 11 people, including 10 women, were arrested, while in the Islamabad raid, 143 people were arrested, including 43 women. He said the centres were carrying out transnational scams and fraud, targeting countries in South Asia.</p> <h2><a id="modus-operandi" href="#modus-operandi" class="heading-permalink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" title="Permalink"></a>Modus operandi</h2> <p>Explaining the modus operandi, he said the two centres in the latest raids worked differently.</p> <p>At the Rawalpindi centre, an elaborate setup posing as the police had been created. The operators would offer loans, and when it was time to recover the loans — or when they had trapped someone and wanted to extract money — they would call and scam that victim.</p> <p>The suspects would tell a person that they were either being surveilled or on a hit list. Once someone fell into their trap, they would transfer the person to a setup made to look like the police in Bangladesh, put the victim in contact with someone posing as a police officer and then extort money.</p> <p>At the Islamabad centre, they worked in layers; first, they trapped the victim and convinced them to install an application on their mobile phone. Once it was installed, they obtained access to the person’s photo gallery.</p> <p>After accessing the gallery and obtaining a selfie, they would issue a loan for a minimal amount. But their real target was to collect the person’s credentials: mobile number, personal information and other data.</p> <p>They also obtained information about close family members whom the borrower had identified as guarantors, such as a wife, father, brother, cousin or other family members named as next of kin.</p> <p>Once they had collected all these credentials, the case would be passed to senior members. When they had extracted all of the money they could from someone, they would wipe out that person’s account and close the case.</p> <figure class='media w-full sm:w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/1206329'> <div class='media__item media__item--newskitlink '> <iframe class="nk-iframe" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="height:250px;position:relative" src="https://www.dawn.com/news/card/1206329" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms"></iframe></div> </figure> <p>The second method was to take a person’s selfie and other pictures from their phone gallery and edit them into pornographic material, using the person’s face in what appeared to be a professional manner. They would then start threatening, harassing and blackmailing the victim.</p> <p>“Even though the resulting pictures might have been fabricated, the threats were still effective. The victim would be under tremendous pressure, fearing that the images would reach their community or family. Under that pressure, the person would start paying money,” Khan said.</p> <p>He said the scammers extracted personal information in the name of loans, manipulated it and used it against the victims, or created sexual content depicting the victim and extracted money through harassment and blackmail.</p> <p>Responding to a question about alleged masterminds, Khan said they were present at every call centre and also arrested. After that, the agency would investigate local facilitators, including whoever rented out the building, those who made the arrangements and connections and those who set up the operation through a fake company.</p> <p>“We also trace the people who pay the bills and pursue those involved. Then we work at the transnational and international level. We have liaison arrangements with different countries. If a handler or operator belongs to another country, we communicate through embassies and our international contacts,” he noted.</p> <h2><a id="a-global-problem" href="#a-global-problem" class="heading-permalink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" title="Permalink"></a>A global problem</h2> <p>The additional director further stated that international cooperation was being strengthened because such call centres had become a global problem.</p> <p>The NCCIA would handle investigations in Pakistan, while the relevant agencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, China and other countries would handle such matters in their respective jurisdictions.</p> <p>Khan added that in a previous Rawalpindi call centre case, foreign nationals were arrested and are in jail, and will face trial according to Pakistani law.</p> <p>On the changing methods of call centres, he acknowledged that they were no longer necessarily operating in large plazas. In one house, 10 to 12 people gathered with a computer setup and connected their applications and websites to bank accounts.</p> <p>Someone may be sitting in another country while the people here trap the victim, the NCCIA official pointed out. Once the victim starts depositing money into the account, the person in the other country receives the money.</p> <p>He noted that the Rawalpindi centre had been operating for about a month, while the Islamabad facility had been established only 15 or 20 days earlier. The floor managers and overall HR managers at both centres were locals, he added.</p> <p>“We will investigate and interrogate further to establish who is connected to the back-end operation. We need to find out in which country the application was developed, who developed it and who is handling it,” Khan stated.</p> <h2><a id="staying-safe" href="#staying-safe" class="heading-permalink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" title="Permalink"></a>Staying safe</h2> <p>Speaking about how the youth could tell which call centres are legal, Khan said the first thing is common understanding.</p> <p>“If an entire floor is generating sexual content, you know that is illegal. That is a matter of common sense.”</p> <p>Khan added that when applying for a job, young people should ask which organisation the business is registered with, who approved it and what approval it received from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.</p> <figure class='media w-full sm:w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/2041334'> <div class='media__item media__item--newskitlink '> <iframe class="nk-iframe" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="height:250px;position:relative" src="https://www.dawn.com/news/card/2041334" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms"></iframe></div> </figure> <p>Moreover, he said many loan applications were operating legally because they have proper permission and follow a lawful procedure. The NCCIA inspects their whole system, including whether the applications are accessing people’s photo galleries, and examines their loan-recovery mechanism. If a borrower does not pay, there are legal channels and procedures for recovery.</p> <p>On foreign nationals allegedly involved in cybercrime, Khan said he did not have an exact number, but acknowledged that there have been many deportations.</p> <p>“The number in prison is in the hundreds. When the agency raids one call centre alone, it may find between 150 and 250 people on average,” he added.</p> <p>Khan also rejected attributing call-centre crime to one nationality, saying there are people of multiple nationalities who come to Pakistan and become involved in this work.</p> <p>The agency had also arrested 37 suspects allegedly involved in harassment and blackmail cases over the past two to three years, the official added. The suspects had extracted money from women through harassment and blackmail, and the victims had endured this for the past two or three years.</p> <p>On online betting and gambling, Khan said operators initially give users profits deliberately, enticing people to put more money into these portals. They then assess the victim’s financial capacity and, once convinced that the victim has invested their savings, they wipe out the money and cut off contact.</p> <p>“We are working on this issue and, God willing, will take further action soon. We are making every effort to address fraud involving millions and billions in the name of online betting and gaming,” he stressed.</p> <p>Appealing to young people and businesspeople, including major business owners, Khan urged them against putting business money into buying tokens online and depositing money into gaming applications, gaming websites or betting platforms.</p> <p>“Initially, they may even be allowed to withdraw their money, but essentially the operators are giving them time, playing with their mind and encouraging them to keep depositing more money,” he explained.</p> <p>Khan said the cyber-patrolling teams work around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.</p> This development from dawn.com highlights ongoing changes in the sector.