DNA Edit: Outsourcing fraud - The busting of fake call centres suggests a downturn

Something is rotten in the state of Noida’s call centres, one of the three premier IT hubs in the country, besides Bangalore and Gurgaon. Roughly, two decades ago, Noida in Gautam Buddha Nagar adjoining capital Delhi, had come up on the global map as one of the country’s main ITES centres.

India had replaced manpower in developed countries with its own people.  Well, that was then. Things have apparently taken a turn for the worse, suggesting that all is not well with these call centres, once regarded as among India’s fastest-growing sector. 

The spectre of call centres closing down is a real one. Top global companies have shut down or more than halved their operations in India. A couple of years ago, British Telecom closed down their call centres in Bangalore and Noida, saying the calls will now be answered from United Kingdom. Likewise, some American companies have closed shop in Ahmedabad, citing `risks’ to their business. 

Just what that risk entails, has now become clear in Noida. In July this year, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Royal Mounted Canadian Police, in concert with the Noida police, met to chalk out a plan to stop the growing proliferation of phony call centres.   

Last week on December 21, the police arrested 126 people in its biggest operation so far against a fake call centre operating from a quaint office in Noida. This call centre solicited money up to $3,500 from US citizens by intimidating them with threats of arrest by the FBI over allegedly `stolen’ social security numbers.  This follows similar operations in October and November when fake call centres targeting mostly Americans and Canadian citizens, demanded and got money to fix computers attacked by virus sent to them and by offering tax `benefits’.

The list of services offered, are ingenious, to say the least.  According to the police, this year alone 25 fake call centres were busted in Noida after they were found running duplicitous operations. Inquiries reveal that the call centre operators were not just rooking westerners, but Indians as well.  The scale of operations was pretty wide ranging: from selling exotic holiday packages to IT services. While the scope of cheating was quite substantial, there are more fundamental questions at stake.

By all accounts, the call centre industry is going through a crisis. For the millions involved in the business, the prospects of being unemployed with very little skills is scary. But in the last couple of decades, there have been takeaways, as far as the frauds are concerned.

They are armed with data and details of individuals, which make potential victims vulnerable. It helped them to send malware to computers in the US and Canada and then approach the victims as representatives of companies like Apple and Microsoft - presumably in a western accent, another talent picked up during the course of their work. 

The trouble is such fraud harms them in the long run, as it makes foreign companies suspicious, apart from bringing a bad name to the country.