Accused bought data from sites, targeted elderly

JAIPUR: Investigation into the call centres racket by the city police has revealed that the accused purchased data of around five lakh foreign nationals from websites. They allegedly targeted elderly people.

In two different incidents on Thursday, the Jaipur city police arrested 25 people of two gangs involved in duping people in the USA, China and other countries.

“On the input of state special branch, the city police was keeping an eye on the call centre for last few months.

When a team went for inspection and questioned Vaibhav Pareek, the kingpin of the racket, police came to know that they (the accused) didn’t have any licence to run the call centre. During investigation we also found that the accused had purchase data of nationals of China, America, Hongkong and other countries from websites,” said a senior police official. He added that the money collected from the foreigners after duping them came through a "hawala network" from abroad with the help of middlemen settled in those countries.

Interestingly, other than the kingpin, the accused were not even matric pass, but used to speak multiple foreign languages to deal with their targets.

Every caller from each centre used to make at least 70 to 80 calls per day, of which 10-15 calls would materialise and of these, 3-4 people would make payment under threat by the con men or greed to improve their credit.

“They would speak in a foreign ascent and would dupe them by offering loan on low interest over phone calls.

The gang members also cheated people in the foreign counties posing as tax officials. Generally, they targeted people with low credit ratings,” said Santosh Chalke, additional commissioner of police, Jaipur city.