Fake call centre used to dupe US citizens busted, two held

MUMBAI: The Mumbai crime branch busted a fake call centre racket in Andheri area on Friday and arrested two suspects for allegedly duping around 1,000 American citizens. The arrested accused pretended to be employees of a reputed internet service provider while contacting American citizens and duped them by claiming their computers had been infected by virus. They then charged money to get rid of the ‘virus’, police said.

The accused have been identified as Devid Alphonso, 22, and Sandeep Yadav, 28. Police said they had been running the fake call centre out of a building in Andheri (West) for the past seven months. A total of 39 people were working in the office and they were each paid a minimum salary of ₹25,000 per month, police said. Alphonso, who is the prime accused, was heading the office while Yadav monitored the technical aspects of the racket.

The accused were arrested following a raid in their office. The raid, which was conducted following a tip-off, was carried out by a police team headed by senior inspector Mahesh Desai. The statements of employees inside the office were recorded. Computers, hard disc and several other equipment s were seized from the office, said Desai.

Employees of the call centre were trained and made calls to American citizens through VOIP

(voice over internet protocol, which allows making national and international calls). They pretended to be employees of an internet service provider. “They would tell them that ‘we got to know that your personal computer is infected by virus’. The accused then charged money to ‘clean’ the virus from their computer system,” said deputy commissioner of police, Akbar Pathan.