Pakistan’s cyber crime agency says it has put 154 people in custody after three days of raids on two call centres, one in Islamabad and one in Rawalpindi. Of the total, 53 are women. NCCIA says the two ran different scams, both aimed at victims in several South Asian countries.
At a Saturday press conference, Additional Director Shoaib Khan put the Islamabad haul at 143 people (43 of them women). The other 11 were picked up in Rawalpindi, in a call centre run from an ordinary house; 10 of them are women and one is a man.
The Islamabad centre, Khan explained, worked in layers. Staff got borrowers to install an app, which opened up the phone’s photo gallery, then issued a tiny loan against a selfie. The real aim was the borrower’s details and those of the relatives named as guarantors. Once a case had been squeezed for money, it went to senior members, who emptied the person’s account and closed it. A second method took photos from the gallery and edited them into explicit pictures, which were used to threaten victims into paying. NCCIA says 37 of the detainees were involved in this blackmail, some for two to three years.
The FIR describes that centre as unregistered and posing as an IT business, run by a four-member management team. Its agents chased borrowers through an app called Cashloan, and NCCIA registered the case on 13 November.
The Rawalpindi centre worked differently, according to Khan. It also offered loans, but when it was time to collect, or to squeeze a victim, staff phoned them and claimed they were under surveillance or on a hit list. Victims who panicked were handed on to a staged Bangladeshi police desk, where a fake officer asked for payment.
Asked about the people running the operations, Khan said they were on site at both centres and are in custody. Landlords, fixers and whoever registered the shell company behind each centre come next. He also said NCCIA has pinned down each detainee’s role (who made calls, who edited material), and that FIRs follow those roles rather than treating everyone alike.
The bigger weakness, Khan said, sits upstream. Shell firms get registered on thin checks, banks open accounts for them, and the operators wire those accounts into loan apps and betting sites to move money. NCCIA is drafting advice for the banks and registries, and wants tighter verification for new companies and their accounts.
It follows the Karachi raid earlier this month, where 273 people were arrested.
For ordinary people, Khan’s advice is to avoid suspicious loan apps and never hand photos, phone data or family details to strangers. Before taking a call-centre job, he said, ask which company it is and under what registration it operates; parents should find out where their children work. An arrest leaves an FIR on a young person’s record, he warned, which can follow them when they apply for a government job.
A court in Islamabad remanded the men to NCCIA custody for three days on Saturday, and they are due back before it on 17 November. The women were sent to Adiala Jail until 28 November.
