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BENGALURU: In what looks like a major syndicate of an international cybercrime network, a gang operating from the city targeted citizens in the USA and siphoned off money under the pretext of Microsoft Technical Support personnel handling the ‘Federal Trade Commission’. The gang was busted. However, cops are yet to discover the number of victims and the amount lost by them. Acting on a tip-off, police teams from the special cell of the Cyber Command, along with sleuths from the Cyber Crime Police Station, Whitefield division, raided the office premises of Musk Communications located on the 6th Floor, Delta Building, Sigma Soft Tech Park, Whitefield Main Road, near Varthur Kodi. They seized computers, hard disks, laptops, mobile phones, and other electronic gadgets. Additionally, 21 staffers working in the office were arrested. They were produced before a court on Saturday evening and were taken into police custody for questioning. Equipped with a search warrant from a court, the raids were carried out on Friday and Saturday.The firm Musk Communications rented a spacious 4,500 square feet office premises from this August, police investigations revealed. “We have to question the building owner on some points. Also, the rent for this office premises runs into several lakhs for sure,” an investigating officer said.A senior police officer explained their modus operandi to STOI and said, “The miscreants deployed malicious Facebook advertisements to freeze victims’ computers, falsely claimed data compromise, and extorted money under the guise of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) violations. They ran targeted Facebook advertisement campaigns aimed at United States-based users, embedding malicious code disguised as genuine service links or security alerts,” he said, adding that “When an unsuspecting user clicked on the advertisement, the code executed and locked the system. A pop-up message then appeared, falsely claiming to be from Microsoft Global Technical Support and displaying a fake helpline number. Once victims contacted the number, the fraudsters impersonated technical support executives. They misled victims by claiming their computers were hacked, their IP addresses were compromised, and that their banking credentials and personal data were at high risk. Under the pretext of resolving the alleged hacking and ‘FTC violations’, the fraudsters falsely claimed that the Federal Trade Commission was involved. They coerced victims into paying for security fixes, compliance procedures, or immediate risk mitigation, collecting large sums from them,” he said.Director General of Police-Cyber Command Unit, Bengaluru, Pronab Mohanty, said they suspect miscreants of duping the victims of hundreds of crores in the form of bitcoins. According to Mohanty, they acted on a concrete tip-off about the company and its illegal activities.“The raids were carried out for two days. During the operation, 21 employees, who were actively involved in cheating foreign nationals by posing as Microsoft support technicians, were secured and arrested. Several computer systems, digital devices, mobile phones, and other electronic evidence used for committing the offence were seized. A large and detailed picture will come out in the near future as we question the suspects,” Mohanty said. Go to Source