Microsoft partners with India's CBI & Japan's JC3 to bust AI scam targeting Japanese older adults

Tech support scams have been around for years, but AI is taking them to a whole new level. That’s why India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Microsoft, and JC3 (Japan Cybercrime Control Center) teamed up to bust one of the most coordinated AI-powered scams yet.

On May 28, the CBI raided 19 locations across India, arrested six key players, and shut down two illegal call centers. These centers had been posing as Microsoft support lines, specifically targeting older adults in Japan using fake security alerts. Authorities seized phones, computers, DVRs, and storage devices tied to the operation.

Microsoft, India’s CBI, and Japan’s JC3 bust a full AI-powered scam network

This wasn’t your average pop-up scam. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit and the CBI uncovered a large-scale ecosystem built around fraud. It included everything from pop-up creators and search optimizers to payment handlers and even AI-driven language translators.

Scammers used generative AI to design realistic pop-ups in Japanese, pick likely victims, and automate nearly every step of the scam process. With intel from Japan’s JC3, Microsoft was able to take down more than 66,000 malicious URLs and domains globally in just the past year.

Older adults are still the main target

Unfortunately, roughly 90% of the victims in this case were over 50. That lines up with global trends—the FBI says U.S. citizens over 60 lost nearly $590 million to tech support scams in 2023 alone.

This latest bust shows how Microsoft, the CBI, and international partners are shifting their approach. Rather than chase down one call center at a time, they’re now dismantling entire fraud infrastructures from the top down—because AI scams aren’t slowing down, and neither are the people fighting them.