The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) raided three call centres in Islamabad over the past 24 hours, taking 212 individuals into custody for their alleged involvement in international fraud schemes, the agency’s spokesperson said on Tuesday.

In a statement, the spokesperson said the NCCIA’s Islamabad unit had launched a major crackdown on illegal call centres as part of efforts to curb organised cyber fraud.

“Raids were conducted on 3 call centres established in Sectors E-11 and G-10, resulting in a total of 212 individuals being taken into custody,” according to the spokesperson.

He added that the detainees included Chinese and Pakistani men and women.

“During the operations, 306 mobile phones, 383 computers/CPUs and 299 monitors and laptops were recovered,” he said.

The spokesperson said the suspects were allegedly involved in international fraud through Google scams and “low-dating” schemes, adding that the network was found to be linked to India and Brazil.

A case had been registered and an investigation was underway, he said.

Last week, the NCCIA arrested 27 suspects, including four Afghan nationals, during a major operation in Karachi, busting an international scam call centre.

Initial investigations had revealed that the suspects posed as “authorised representatives of financial institutions and contacted foreign nationals through spoofed and fraudulent calls to obtain their personal and financial information.”

In August, the NCCIA arrested 114 foreign nationals, including 111 Chinese and three Vietnamese citizens, for allegedly running a cyber-romance and sextortion network from a registered IT business in the capital.

The network was allegedly involved in luring foreign nationals into online sexual conversations, including video chats and explicit video calls, and subsequently exploiting the material for criminal and financial purposes.