India: Scam Call Centres

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That is quite all right, Lord Speaker.

I thank my noble friend for that question. He raises a very pertinent point, and I myself have had representation from older people who are worried about scams. As regards our work with India and the Indian Government, my noble friend mentioned the City of London Police, which, as I said, is the lead force for economic crime and has partnered with law enforcement and industry to combat call centre fraud from India and other jurisdictions. It has, for example, partnered with Microsoft, which has led industry efforts to combat this kind of fraud, and as a consequence of that partnership the City of London Police has supported Microsoft in the initiation of a number of enforcement actions, the most recent of which occurred in the Kolkata region. Obviously, things that happen overseas are a matter for the overseas authorities. Moreover, this type of fraud is global, and quite often you cannot trace where it originated.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, last week I received an Outlook email that cited a password I have used, although not for the dubious purposes it alleged. If I paid $1,900 into a Bitcoin account, discretion was assured. Clearly, the attacker had accessed the passwords from one site and sent out a blanket blackmail attempt. Is the Minister convinced that the platform operators are doing everything they can to detect the pattern of such blackmail attempts?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I know that law enforcement agencies are working extremely hard. In fact, every day I am on operational calls with various law enforcement agencies, and my mother was targeted by exactly the same scam last week. The FCA has conducted the ScamSmart campaign to raise awareness of this type of thing, particular pension and investment scams.