Microsoft tech support scammer stole of $3 million

A resident of North Carolina is accused of organizing a fraudulent scheme that was disguised as tech support activity. The attacker in four years managed to deceive American citizens for a total of $ 3 million.

According to court documents, Bishap Mittal created the company Capstone Technologies LLC, on behalf of which, together with the accomplice, he managed many sites and operations.

Mittal and his partner bought ads from Google and Bing to promote their sites in the results of search results. They also purchased access to pop-up windows from developers avdare.

When a user visited their site, aggressive advertising windows blocked the victim’s browser, claiming that the computer was infected with malware. Most of these pop-up windows were disguised as notifications sent by Microsoft.

The victims were asked to contact tech support. According to the indictment, users were connected to a call center located in New Delhi, India.

The operators of this call center acted on the developed scenarios, claiming that the user’s computer was malfunctioning due to the use of two antivirus programs in the system.

To eliminate all problems, users had to pay amounts ranging from $ 200 to $ 2,400. The activities of the criminals took place from November 2014 to August 2018.

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At that time Microsoft said that that 3.3 million Americans fall victim to technical support scams every year and lose $1.5 billion. – IANS