“Welcome to the Pakistan’s call center: where we fix America’s Wi-Fi and lose our own peace”.
Nowadays, a very dangerous trend is emerging where people call themselves under the name of “centralized investment” or similar schemes to scam others. Sometimes they pretend to be managers, and sometimes they act like government agents, pressuring victims to send money. They speak in a very professional way, making it sound like an official call. They even say things like, “We are calling you again from the assistant or company,” just to gain your trust. If you live in Pakistan—whether it’s Quetta, Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, or Rawalpindi—you have probably seen advertisements on walls saying:
“Join a call centre, earn 100,000 rupees, no degree required!”
Many people also joined such call centre’s and actually earned money, which made us think that it was a great opportunity. But later, it became clear that some of these places are actually traps. It’s true that there are legitimate call centres in Pakistan, but today we are going to talk about scam centres —which are operating not only in Pakistan, but also heavily in India and many other countries around the world, with multiple cases reported against them.
Whatever I am saying, I’m not saying it based on useless hearsay. This is something that happened in my own life, in my own family. My cousin also got a job in a call center like this. It was very good; he used to earn more than lakhs every month. Because obviously, it was a kind of wealth. A person’s mind completely goes numb. The routine is so tough. And especially, this is black money that people earn by scamming others. He didn’t know at first, but when he found out, he was very shocked to hear it — that I mean, such things are happening in Pakistan too, that call centres are so bad. They used to do the same on calls — they would call people in different countries, gain their trust, and scam them. They’d take their passwords, get them to invest, and by showing them fake profits, they’d tell them, ‘you’ll get double the profit,’ and look people like that. But when he found out, he resigned quickly. He didn’t do that job after that. But I’m telling all the consequences and harms of this. That’s why I thought I should write about Pakistan’s call centres.
Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, Cambodia, South American countries—you name it. There is hardly any developing country left that is not involved in this business. According to data, there are around one thousand call centres in Pakistan, with close to a billion employees. But the real question is: How does this business actually work? What are the major cases involved?
And what is Operation Grey, launched by the FIA and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA)? Let’s talk about that today. First of all, the State Bank of Pakistan identifies suspicious transactions. In the financial year 2024–25, billions of rupees were found in the accounts of 36 corporate companies. This raises serious concern. We start wondering—where is all this money coming from? Because, financially, it doesn’t seem possible for such large amounts to enter Pakistan via online transactions without triggering bank warnings, especially when the FIA maintains strict monitoring. After this, the NCCIA initiated its operations. Let me give you an example to show the scale of this fraud. In Faisalabad, in July 2025, a raid was conducted inside a factory that was linked to a former government-affiliated individual. During the operation, NCCIA arrested 149 people. Among them were 78 Pakistanis, 48 Chinese nationals, as well as individuals from Nigeria, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. There were also 18 women working inside the facility. These people were hacking bank internet systems, stealing data, selling it, and withdrawing money.
“ You sell your voice 8 hours a day and come home too tired to use it for yourself”.
In Karachi, in June 2025, a raid was conducted where 18 people were arrested. This group was running a complete scam operation targeting Gulf countries. They had applications and advanced gadgets being used for these activities. Kuwaiti police uniforms were also recovered from the site. In addition, a full Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system was discovered, which, as you may know, is used to make fake calls using automated voices. This system was actively being used for scamming. Similarly, in June 2025, another raid took place in Islamabad, in the G-10 sector. A woman named Nida, who was allegedly collaborating with a private bank manager, was involved in a multi-billion-rupee scam. They were deceiving people, lying to them, and running fraudulent schemes. The number of victims in these cases is so large that it would take too long to even list them all. Then there was the Heart Sender Group scandal. Raids were carried out in Lahore and Multan, and 21 people were arrested. Authorities recovered phishing kits, scam pages, and ready-made templates. Phishing schemes are methods where scammers trick you into sharing sensitive information—Such as your passwords, personal identity data, or bank account details. This was a global-level scam operation. Assets worth around 480 billion were recovered from this network. The company operating under the name “Heart Sender Group” owned luxury assets, including Lamborghinis, Supercars in Dubai, and multiple properties in Dubai. They also had 142 crypto wallets. According to estimates—and with the involvement of the FBI in this operation—This single company caused losses of around 50 million dollars in the United States alone by fraudulently collecting money from people online through illegal means.
“ Our shifts starts with ‘How may I help you?’ And ends with ‘How do I help myself?’.”
You may have also heard the term “Dabba Scheme,” which is commonly used in Karachi. Basically, it refers to money being withdrawn from your bank account through fraudulent means. (Personally, I have met a woman who became a victim of this. She received a call and wasn’t vigilant enough to realize it was a scam. The call came from a number that looked like an official helpline. When she answered, she was told that her credit card had been used somewhere suspiciously. She was asked to share her details so they could “block” the transaction. As soon as she provided her information, 1.8 million rupees were withdrawn from her account. The case has been ongoing for two to three years now, and nothing significant has happened. So this is how these scamming processes work.
Now the question is: How do these people operate?
They take advantage of a major issue in Pakistan—high unemployment and a large number of uneducated or unskilled individuals. Instead of spending years completing degrees, postgraduate studies, and entering the job market later in life for a salary of 25 to 30 thousand rupees, many people are quickly drawn toward these setups. What happens there? They are offered attractive salaries, free meals, and gaming zones—A very appealing environment. The message is simple: “Speak English and earn money. “These operations work on a fear and greed mechanism. Fear—people feel responsible for supporting their families. Greed—the promise of easy money. They are told: make calls, earn money for yourself, and help the company earn as well. This is how a large-scale racket has started operating in Pakistan. Now, the important part is—these setups imitate the operations of a complete, legitimate company. They function just like real businesses. First, they often get registered and operate within legal frameworks in different countries. In Pakistan, some are even unregistered. Sometimes they present themselves as software firms, other times as digital service providers. To appear legitimate, they may even offer some genuine services. But in every office, there is usually a hidden corner—A small team of two or three people working in a compartmentalized setup, assigned specific tasks.
“We are not paid to think, we are paid to read scripts”.
That’s where the real fraud happens, and that’s where the real money is made. Wherever these operations are running, this pattern is often seen. And just to clarify—we are not generalizing or defaming the entire digital market of Pakistan. This is based on available data and reported cases. In some situations, even banks become involved, because certain bankers may act as accomplices. They help by sharing resources or overlooking suspicious activity—and after that, no one questions where such large amounts of money are coming from. At some point, these operations start to look legitimate. Another common method is pop-up virus scams. When you open certain websites, large advertisements suddenly appear. If you click on them, they redirect you to phishing pages. You’ll see phone numbers there, and if someone contacts them out of confusion or carelessness, they can easily get trapped. Of course, not everyone falls for it—many people are aware—but there are still a lot of individuals who do get scammed. Because at the end of the day, this is driven by greed—the promise of easy money. Another technique is impersonation. They impersonate banks, companies, and official organizations by creating fake identities. These setups are highly organized. They build complete hierarchies—there are CEOs, accountants, HR managers, and even quality assurance teams working inside these operations. In some cases, they even have political protection. Now, how do they target people? During the daytime, they target Australia. In the afternoon, they shift focus to Europe.
“We’re paid to sound American , but forbidden to think like a human.”
At night, they target the United States to extract money. Their methods include malicious advertisements—pop-up virus infections, fake phone numbers, and completely fabricated schemes. Money laundering is also a big part of this system. They use crypto wallets as well as informal systems like hawala. For example, money may be sitting in an account in Germany, the UK, or the US. It is transferred digitally to someone else there, while the equivalent amount is handed over in cash locally. A very senior lawyer once mentioned in a meeting that he personally knows individuals who have billions of rupees in cash stored in their homes. The cash economy in Pakistan is much larger than people realize. If you look around, you’ll notice people suddenly becoming rich within days. When you ask what they do, there’s often no clear answer. They might claim to run an office or provide services, but in reality, there’s nothing substantial underneath. Much of this is fueled by fake calls, money laundering, and the hawala. For the system. These scammers often operate using foreign SIM cards. Many of them have UK or other international numbers. If you ask them why, they’ll give casual excuses like, “I travel abroad often.” But in reality, it’s to hide their identity and avoid detection. Similarly, these call centers operate from rented floors. They work there for a year or two, then relocate, change their IP addresses, and continue the operation. At the same time, they distribute money to certain people to keep things running smoothly. They also heavily use cryptocurrency for cross-border fund transfers. Today, there are many platforms that allow money to be transferred globally without going through traditional banking channels, and regulation is still limited. The FATF refers to this as Cyber-Enabled Fraud (CEF), and its nature is essentially transnational. For example, in Islamabad, during a raid—likely in the G-10 sector—Several individuals were arrested, including around five foreign nationals who were detained on the spot.
So guys, they were exploring ways to make money, and apart from that, there are AI-generated images and fake voices being used to make calls. Now this fake call system has become so big that call centres are operating from places like India or Pakistan. The people there pretend to be foreigners and talk in fake accents. Often, they even hack devices—like cameras—and then scare the person by saying, “We can see you… you’re sitting on a charpai wearing a vest while talking to me on this call.” This is how they manipulate and fool people. What was happening is that these people were sitting in Cambodia doing online theft. The “software house” I was talking about that they had a complete network that was stealing money from people’s bank accounts, doing blackmail, and even involved in pornography and other illegal activities. Globally, discussions show that this industry causes losses of around 12 to 14 trillion dollars—which is more than the GDP of many countries. Every second, about $300,000 is being lost.
If I talk about the U.S., in 2022 alone, Indian scammers took $10 billion from the American economy. In Cambodia, these call centre’s generate around $19 billion annually—which is about 60% of the country’s GDP. So we’re not talking about small amounts—this is far beyond what most people can imagine. Human trafficking is also involved. Fake job campaigns are created where people are told to apply, go abroad, and get jobs. But when they reach there after spending money on visas and travel, they realize it’s all a scam. Their money is taken, and they are locked in small rooms and forced to do cyber fraud—this is often called “scam operations. “In March 2025, Interpol conducted an operation where they rescued 66 victims who had been trapped due to these online scams. These people are often detained in compounds and forced to work. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission report of 2023, there were losses of $2.6 billion—caused by just two call centre’s, which scammed 32,000 people. Another 2025 stat says that globally, 12.5 billion unwanted calls are made—fake calls from scam call centre’s. Out of these, one in every four calls is made using AI-generated voice, and 55% of them are fraudulent.
They even use real-time AI translators. So communication has become very easy for scammers. Whatever the other person says appears on their screen, and they respond instantly while pretending to be fluent. This shows how massive this scam industry has become and how innocent people fall victim. Many low-level workers don’t even know what’s really going on—they just follow instructions. The real money goes to those at the top, who enjoy luxury, trips, and benefits. Companies are being set up under the name of outsourcing and business process management (BPM), but they are actually running scams. This trend has grown significantly, especially in India. In Pakistan, it’s not yet at that level because the scale and skill base aren’t as large. When authorities like NCI find out that around 36 corporate companies are involved in such frauds, they speed up operations and make arrests. There are also crackdowns affecting YouTubers and others connected to these networks. Now the question is: how can we make this system fair? Because if this industry keeps growing like this, it will bring pressure from organizations like FATF on countries like Pakistan. Globally, huge financial losses are happening. In Pakistan’s case, call centers generate around $7 million in exports (according to State Bank figures). So if Pakistan wants to become a legitimate outsourcing hub, all of this fraudulent activity must be eliminated.
For example, what Pakistani sellers did on Amazon—starting drop shipping with fake accounts and manipulating the system…Entire cities have been banned from your side. A platform through which people around the world earn money through legitimate means—when we misuse it in negative ways, we end up destroying it ourselves. So, to control this greed, the first step is that we must eliminate the technological obstacles that prevent fair earning practices. If I start telling you stories about the legal framework—how many arrests have been made and how many actions have been taken—you would be shocked. Now let me share some figures from the Interior Ministry. Between 2020 and 2024, around 650,000 cybercrime complaints were reported. That means 650,000 people said they were victims of fraud. Out of these, about 400,000 cases were verified. Around 73,000 inquiries were conducted. From those 73,000 inquiries, only 5,000 cases went to court. And out of those 5,000, only 200 resulted in convictions. So, 650,000 complaints—but only 200 people were actually convicted. This is our conviction rate. You can also see that our judicial system is facing serious challenges in handling these kinds of cases. The number of convictions is very low, while the workload is extremely high. It becomes difficult to even understand where to begin—how to catch these people and how to proceed.
When the numbers are this large, there should be accountability. We need to ask: how do these individuals disappear from the process midway? Is there some kind of financial influence involved, or something else happening behind the scenes that causes the conviction rate to fall below 1%?To ensure fair practices, the authorities (SCI) have provided all this data, and a new policy has been introduced stating that no call Center will be allowed to operate without proper licensing. What is needed now is strict implementation of this policy. The reason is that many young people end up ruining years of their lives—spending six to seven years working in such places. The working environment is often poor, and they can be fired over very minor issues. There is no job security. On top of that, many of these companies have no official presence at all—no proper record, no registered identity. Sometimes, there isn’t even a name displayed outside, yet a full call Centre is operating inside. This shows that our system has serious problems. There are too many cybercrime cases, but very few people actually get punished. The workload on the system is very high, and because of that, many criminals escape in the middle of the process. Out of hundreds of thousands of complaints, only a tiny number lead to convictions. This raises serious questions—why is the conviction rate so low? Is there corruption, weak investigation, or flaws in the legal process? To fix this, fair practices must be enforced. The new rule that no call Centre can operate without a license is a good step, but it needs proper implementation. Another major issue is that many young people work in these call centres for years in poor conditions, with no job security. Some of these companies are not even officially registered—they don’t have proper records, and sometimes they don’t even display their name outside. Overall, the system needs stronger regulation, transparency, and accountability.
Published in NOVA, May 4, 2026.