A scam advertisement that seeks to lure unsuspecting victims into believing their computer has a problem and call the number to seek assistance. (Screenshot of Jim Browning’s Youtube video)

INDIA — It was reported in media, detailing how a British software engineer, who goes by the pseudonym Jim Browning, was able to outwit scammers in India and hunt them down.

For more than 4 years, he has been hunting down scammers and fraudsters operating in call centres mainly in India.

Mr Browning was able to do this by hacking into their computers as well as their CCTV cameras. He would first allow the scammers to have remote access to his computer.

He does this by first calling them by seemingly being led on a scam, by calling the numbers that scammers use to bait their victims on advertisements disguised as technical warnings that their computers have been infected with a virus or their computers have a system issue that needs to be fixed.

“If you watch my channels, you would know that I deliberately phone these numbers. I have my PC set up in a way, if they attempt to scam me and they usually run a set script. I will reverse this connection and gain access to the scammer’s PC.” said Mr Browing in his video documenting how he outwitted the scammers.

Thereafter, he was able to turn the table around and hacked into scammers’ computers and controlled them. He then sits behind his computer back in Britain and quietly observes what the scammers are doing. He can even find out the scammer’s real identity, how much money the person is stealing and who the victims are.

Earlier this year, Mr Browning helped to stop a group of scammers in New Delhi, who were posing as law enforcement agents to cheat victims in Europe.

Thanks to his efforts, the Austrian police contacted the Indian authorities, who then raided the call centre in September and arrested two suspects. Cryptocurrency worth a total of US$160,000 was seized from the scammers.

“I observe a scam call centre for as long as it takes, sometimes over six months, to identify who the scammers are,” Mr Browning said to Straits Times.

“If you don’t know who is behind it, there’s no good going to the police to say there’s a scam call centre in this area.”

“It takes a while to work out who they are as scammers don’t use their real names. But they will browse the Internet or order food and type these things on their computer.”

The fraudsters in India scam handicapped people too. On one occasion, while monitoring a scammer’s computer, the victim told the scammer she was legally blind and had been diagnosed with a fatal condition. She only had less than a year to live. Yet, the scammer had no conscience and kept trying to scam the poor blind lady.

Mr Browning has nearly four million subscribers on YouTube. He frequently posts videos on his YouTube channel showing his interactions with scammers and footage of fraudsters cheating from call centres in India. He said that his main aim is to use his YouTube channel to educate the public.

But Mr Browning’s efforts – while impactful – are hardly making a dent in the scamming business coming out of India.

UK media, Dailymail reported that local police have shut down five call centres in Sector V in Kolkata, India’s third richest city — each with hundreds of staff in just May this year.

“Within that small area there might be upwards of a hundred different scam call centres, in just that one area. It is definitely the capital of scams,” Mr Browning said to Dailymail.

These scammers allegedly bring in a whopping US$20 billion from victims around the globe and have targeted at least 60 million people.

“It’s maybe only a few kilometres in diameter but if you were able to close down all the scam call centres in that area, I would reckon maybe half of the scam calls would cease throughout the world. It’s just that serious.”

In 2019, police had to seal off 15 floors across six separate buildings after shutting down fraudulent operations.

So just how much do such scammers get for their work as employees of the scam centres?

An undercover stint showed that such scammers are offered 9000 rupees (US$110) for their monthly salary, and 2000 rupees for each “sale” and if they manage to clinch three “sales”, they get double their monthly salary for the month.



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