2 fake call centres busted in Delhi, 70 arrested
The Delhi police busted a fake call centre in West Delhi’s Hari Nagar and arrested 65 people, who allegedly impersonated government officials of the US and duped US-based citizens on the pretext of suspension of their social security number, officials said on Friday.
The two owners of the call centre, Lakhan Jagwani and Vijender Singh Rawat, who were also arrested in the case, procured the details of US residents using illegal techniques such as VOIP calling and caller ID spoofing and extorted money from them in the name of saving them from legal action, the police said.
It said the magnitude of the total cheated amount is estimated to be in crores.
DCP (West) Urvija Goel said, “On July 28, as per information, our team conducted raid at Hari Nagar, where several callers were engaged in making and receiving calls by impersonating genuine government officials of the US Customs and Border Protection Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, Sheriff, FBI, and Treasury office USA. The two owners along with 63 telecallers were found on the spot.”
The accused also tried to mislead the police by pretending to be genuine medical services supplier of the USA. However, during questioning and scrutiny of their network, computers, and mobiles, they divulged that they were engaged in calling US nationals by impersonating as genuine government officials of the US, she said.
According to the police, the accused targeted the victims through a prerecorded robocall claiming to be from the legal department and threatened the victim that their social security number would be suspended soon as they were involved in illegal activities. To save themselves from legal action, they were asked to immediately move their entire bank balance amount into e-gift cards for “security reasons” or they would end up losing all their money.
The police has claimed to have seized 58 computers, two laptops, internet distribution switch, internet routers, and incriminating data found in computers and mobile phones.
Meanwhile, with the arrest of five persons, the Delhi police has claimed to have busted another fake call centre in Malviya Nagar. The accused persons were allegedly duping US nationals on the pretext of providing tech support to them, the police said.
According to the police, a tip-off was received that large-scale cyber cheating was being done at Panchsheel Vihar in Malviya Nagar in an organised manner through a call centre. Following this, a raid was conducted.
On inquiry, it was revealed that the fraudsters were engaged in using illegal techniques, VOIP calling, bypassing the legal International Long Distance (ILD) Gateways and thus causing wrongful loss to government exchequer and wrongful gain to themselves, the police said.
They were cheating US nationals by using “Xlite/Eye Beam” software through cloud servers. The accused used to talk to the customers on the pretext of providing them tech support and if the customer paid a fee of $100 to $400 then they induced them to provide the same amount through various payments methods.
They first used to send a pop-up message to the customer after obtaining their data from cloud servers stating that their system had been attacked by a cyber-threat and later asked them to obtain tech support from them. A total of 13 computers along with two pen drives and two notebooks have been recovered from the accused, it added.