Karachi call centre raid nets 273 as cybercrime agency widens sweep

Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency arrested 273 people at a call centre in Karachi on 4 November, the agency said in a social media statement, describing the site as a base for defrauding foreign nationals.

The call centre, Voxtron Solutions, allegedly posed as representatives of financial institutions and offered fake financial schemes and credit card deals to people abroad. Officers seized 339 laptops, 152 mobile phones and four computers during the raid.

Shehzad Akbar, an additional director at the NCCIA, told Arab News that a survey had identified 300 to 350 call centres working in the city. "We have not yet taken legal action against all of them but we will proceed against them one by one," he said.

He said such operations need little space. "Basically they only need an IT service through which they can obtain credit card information," he said. "These activities can be carried out from a small house or a small residential settlement. Four or five people can run such a network." Some groups, he said, use several vehicles to shift location while running the fraud.

The agency had registered two criminal cases against the same company earlier, Akbar said. Investigators named only the owners in those cases and left out employees with technical skills, who then resumed work. "The problem is that when cases are not registered against employees, they remain free, although the specific skill required for these activities rests with them," he said. Employees and their relatives can restart under different company names at the same premises, and a gap between registered and operating names makes it hard for investigators to link them.

Preliminary investigations say employees posed as representatives of foreign banks and loan verification services to obtain personal and financial information from overseas customers. The card data was passed to merchants linked to companies registered in the United States, where unauthorised transactions could be made. Investigators have identified one merchant and are reviewing financial transactions to map the network.

Akbar said the raid followed a local tip, not information from a foreign government or an international law enforcement agency.

Families of detained employees protested after the arrests, saying some of those held, including young people, did not know about the company's illegal work. Akbar said the hiring advertisement set a minimum age of 18, but it is alleged that younger people were also employed to keep costs down.

At a hearing on 5 November, Judicial Magistrate East Gulriz Memon ordered the release of 98 women and two underage boys on bail of Rs 5,000 each, and ordered verification of the minors' ages. Nine main suspects, among them the company's owners, were handed to the NCCIA on two-day physical remand. The rest were sent to jail on judicial remand.

The investigating officer presented a Sindh home department notification declaring the call centre building a temporary sub-jail, citing security concerns and the difficulty of moving so many detainees.

Akbar said the agency would keep examining financial transactions and digital evidence to identify those responsible and take action against them.