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Call centre busted: 32 detained for duping US citizens of nearly ₹1 crore
Gurugram The police on Friday busted a call centre operating out of Udyog Vihar Phase 4 for the last three months and detained 32 people for allegedly duping residents
Gurugram The police on Friday busted a call centre operating out of Udyog Vihar Phase 4 for the last three months and detained 32 people for allegedly duping residents of the United States of America (USA) and Mexico, by posing as employees of an e-commerce company and duping them of money through gift cards, the police said.
The police said that they had duped more than 1,000 US and Mexico citizens and earned nearly ₹1 crore in the last three months. “The inbound call centre, operating without any licence or permission, used to send messages to the targets saying that their account has witnessed some unusual activity and it will be blocked. The message urged targets to call the toll free number mentioned in the message for a solution and then charged then each caller $100 to $150 through gift cards. The gift cards were routed to bank accounts in India through Europe and China,” said Karan Goel, assistant commissioner of police, DLF.
The police said the kingpins who were operating the call centre fled the spot before the police reached. They have been identified as Munish Kumar, Vishal Singh and Umesh Sharma.
The police said this was the 18th such call centre busted over the past year. Goel said that they have questioned nearly 50 suspects to recover from their possession the data of their victims, mostly based in the USA and other English-speaking countries. This data has details of users, including their email IDs, credit and debit card numbers, and their CVV numbers.
In the latest case, Goel said police had received a tip-off that a fake call centre was operating with more than 50 people. Goel said that the 50-seater call centre was being operated from the first floor of a building in Sector 18 of Udyog Vihar Phase-4 since last November. “The raid was conducted on Thursday night and around 32 employees, who were working at the call centre at that time, were detained,” said Goel.
Of the 32 people detained, 27 are men and five are women. They were paid around ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 per month, based on their qualification. The detained youths were found to be from north-eastern states, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Punjab. At present, the police have registered a case on the complaint of inspector Vivek Kundu, station house officer, cyber police station.
A case was registered under sections 420 (cheating), 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) and 75 (committing offence outside India using computer network) of the Information Technology Act, 2008, at the cyber police station.
“We have informed the e-commerce firm and they are likely to join the investigation as a complainant in the case. We have also informed their legal team to get in touch with us. We will also try to identify some of the victims and make them a witness, to strengthen our case,” Goel said.
During the initial investigation, the people detained from the call centre claimed that they were unaware of the fraud and they were informed that they were working for a reputed e-commerce company. The text and voice messages to targets in the USA and Mexico were sent by masterminds, following which the people used to call the toll-free number 1-855-918-0438. The calls landed at the call centre and those working at the centre talked to the targets, as per a script given to them.
“The mastermind had given a script to the employees and they used to talk to the victims about the unusual activity in the account and offered to provide solution, by charging money through gift cards. “The gift cards were converted and routed through Europe and China,” said Goel.
