Police busted two dozen in international computer virus scam

Uttar Pradesh: Almost two dozen people have been arrested on the suspicion of cheating people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning to them that their computers were affected with a virus and offering to rectify the problem after paying the price.

Ajay Pal Sharma who is the UP police officer said those arrested pretended as authorized representatives of Microsoft and other companies and used their official logos.

He said the arrests were made the inputs from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol. Microsoft was the complainant in the case.

The accused have been running the scam out of call centres in the Indian capital and adjoining states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh for months.

He said their pop-up messages prompted victims in the United States, Britain, Australia and other countries to call a phone number showing on their computer screens. They would then be cheated under the pretext of fixing the problem.

He added that Police recovered hard drives, servers, laptops, mobile phones, computers and central processing units (CPUs) from them.