Delhi: Fake call centre busted in Sultanpur, 26 persons duping US citizens held

Police on Tuesday said they arrested 26 persons, including five women, on charges of running a fake call centre and impersonating customer service providers of a leading e-commerce site (Amazon) to cheat US citizens of money

Police on Tuesday said they arrested 26 persons, including five women, on charges of running a fake call centre and impersonating customer service providers of a leading e-commerce site (Amazon) to cheat US citizens of money.

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The call centre was running for the past seven months from a building in south Delhi’s Sultanpur near Fatehpur Beri. The mastermind of the racket is absconding, the police said.

“On average, the fraudsters cheated six US citizens daily and accumulated nearly ₹4 crore (5,25,000 USD) from approximately 1,250 citizens during these seven months,” said deputy commissioner of police (south) Atul Kumar Thakur.

Additional DCP (south) Harsha Vardhan Mandava said they conducted the search after the special staff team received information that an illegal call centre was operating from a building in Sultanpur in south Delhi. After verifying the information, a search was conducted on Monday and an office set-up was found in the building. The employees were caught red-handed trying to dupe people on calls, he said.

The people at the call centre were pretending to be employee of Amazon Inc and were using illegal techniques such as VOIP calling, to bypass the legal international long-distance gateways. A total of 26 people were caught, said the additional DCP.

“The arrested persons were extorting Amazon customers based in the US by claiming that their Amazon IDs had been hacked and there were illegal transactions. They were tricking the customers into purchasing online gift cards in the name of resolving the issues with their ID. We are now looking for more people involved in the racket,” he said.

This is the third major crackdown in the past 20 days on fake call centres that were targeting US citizens. In the past two searches, the police arrested 84 and 95 persons, respectively. The 84 persons, who were arrested from a call centre in Jagatpuri on June 24, also impersonated Amazon customer service providers. The 95 fraudsters arrested in the second search from fake call centres in Kirti Nagar and Mangolpuri were contacting US citizens posing as that country’s social security administration -- they were duping citizens of money by threatening to revoke their social security number (SSN).