Ponmaran Vinot (Vinoth Ponmaran)

Ponmaran Vinot (Vinoth Ponmaran)

Biography

2024: Creating one of the world's largest fraudulent call centers

On July 31, 2024, the US Department of Justice announced that a court in the Southern District of New York sentenced Indian citizen Vinoth Ponmaran, the creator of one of the world's largest fraudulent call centers, to seven years in prison. Its victims were more than 6,500 people, including the elderly. The damage is estimated at millions of dollars.

Ponmaran is said to be the mastermind behind a complex fraudulent scheme. Its essence boiled down to the fact that pop-ups appeared on the victims' computers with false information that the system was infected with the virus. Next, the user was asked to call a specific phone number for technical support. In some cases, the messages said that if the PC reboots or turns off, all data will be destroyed. Pop-up windows illegally displayed logos of well-known IT companies in order to give credibility.

Pop-ups themselves led to a "complete freeze" of the computer, and therefore many users fell for the trick of intruders and contacted the fraudulent support service. After that, cybercriminals gained remote access to the victim's system and launched a free antivirus program available on the Internet to solve a non-existent problem. The cost of such a "service" ranged from several hundred to thousands of dollars.

According to the investigation, Ponmaran operated a call center in India, which was used to provide fraudulent services to restore computers to work. In addition, he hired accomplices in the United States to register fraudulent legal entities and open bank accounts that were used to generate proceeds of criminal activity. In total, the attackers received more than $6 million from their victims.^[1]

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