The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) says it has arrested 273 people at a Karachi call centre accused of tricking people abroad into handing over card and Social Security details. Additional Director Shahzad Akbar announced the figure at a press conference on Thursday, 5 November.
The centre operated as Voxtron Solutions from a building near Kavish Crown Plaza on Sharea Faisal, Akbar said. Investigators seized 339 laptops, 152 mobile phones and four desktop computers, and the case is registered under six sections of PECA, the 2016 cybercrime law, which cover fraud, forgery, identity misuse and spoofing by electronic means.
According to the agency, staff rang people overseas while pretending to be foreign banks or debt validation firms, offering to check their outstanding debts. The NCCIA says it has “reasonable grounds” to believe the real aim was to collect Social Security numbers and payment card credentials, then use them for unauthorised payments through merchant accounts. The agency alleges the takings were sent home through accounts held by firms and money-transfer services. The seized devices have gone for forensic examination.
Several details come from The Express Tribune’s report from the press conference and the courtroom. Akbar said more than 100 of those held are women and 42 are minors. He called it the first case in which ordinary employees were named alongside the owner, because earlier cases charged owners only and their relatives then reopened under new company names with the same staff. By his estimate about 350 scam call centres work in Karachi, and Voxtron ranked among the top three.
The agency dates the raid to 4 November, but eyewitnesses told the paper that officers arrived on the evening of 3 November. Two earlier searches, a detainee’s relative said, left the owner untouched; the business has reportedly run for about 15 years.
At a hearing the same day, nine main suspects were sent to the NCCIA for two days. Lawyers for the accused said over 70 of the detainees were juveniles and more than 80 were women, and that the charges allow bail. The magistrate agreed for women and under-18s, who can go home on Rs. 5,000 bonds; everyone else goes to jail on judicial remand. The Sindh Home Department has turned the call centre itself into a sub-jail, so that is where the 273 are being kept for now.
Relatives of those arrested blocked part of Sharea Faisal near Baloch Colony Bridge during the day. They said their children worked at the centre and had no part in any fraud, and traffic returned to normal by 1:22pm after police talked the crowd into dispersing. A week earlier the agency had raided a different call centre on the same road and held over 40 people.
The agency has not said which foreign banks or customers were impersonated, how much money moved, or when charges will be formally framed.
