Four telecallers from city held for `25 cr cyber fraud

Seven telecallers of a gang, including four from the city, operating from Mohali, were held by Cyberabad cybercrime police for cheating people to the tune of `25 crore in the name of providing technical support. Officials seized

`1.11 crore in cash, three luxury cars, four laptops, 12 mobiles, 10 CPUs, six rubber stamps, 16 cheque books and

18 debit cards.

The accused were identified as Naveen Bhutani (41), Mohit

(32), Nagaraju Bondada (36), Donthula Sravan Kumar (42), Monu (33), Sadhanala Mukkanti Srinivasa Rao (36) and Pavan Vennelakanti (34), said police commissioner of Cyberabad Stephen Ravindra.

The arrests were made

based on a complaint by Abdul Nayeem, the authorized signatory of HDFC Bank’s credit intelligence and control unit, Hyderabad, wherein he stated that they had noticed multiple suspicious transactions on the swiping machines.

“This was first noticed on a machine issued by HDFC Bank to a merchant, Healthy Dental Clinic, through 85 different international debit cards amounting to `64.40 lakh from December 18 to 23, last year. On enquiry, the clinic failed to provide appropriate information related to the transactions and cardholders,” said the official.

Explaining the modus operandi, officials said Bhutani had worked with IT companies, providing technical services to foreign customers.

“In 2017, he registered a company called Rntech services Pvt Ltd, and with assistance from Monu, set up three call centres in New Delhi, Ghaziabad and Mohali,” Ravindra said.

Bhutani also runs Google advertisement campaigns with his contact numbers in Australia, UK and Singapore. “They cheat customers with inbound calls generated through Google Adwords, when customers respond to Google advertisements and contact telecallers,” explained Ravindra.