Delhi Police, Canada authorities, FBI arrest five for embezzlement

According to officers aware of the matter, the matter came to light after the FBI approached the Delhi Police through the Interpol wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation with details of cyber criminals who were operating call centres in Delhi and adjoining areas to defraud senior citizens in the US.

Delhi Police, in a joint operation with law enforcement agencies from the United States and Canada, has arrested five people for allegedly defrauding senior citizens based in the US on the pretext of providing them with technology support for their “malfunctioning” computers.

Explaining the modus operandi, Deputy commissioner of police (Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations) Prashant K Gautam said the accused would send pop-up ads about some alleged issue with their operating system to senior citizens who are not tech-savvy. (AFP)

Deputy commissioner of police (Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations) Prashant K Gautam on Friday said three accused, identified as Jatin Lamba, Harshad Madaan and Vikas Gupta, were held in Delhi after police conducted overnight raids. Their associate Jayant Bhatia was arrested in Toronto by authorities in Canada, while Kulwinder Singh, the fifth accused, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from New Jersey in the US, the DCP said.

Police said Lamba and his brother Gagan operated a call centre in east Delhi’s Ganesh Nagar that targeted US citizens. Gupta would contact victims to provide tech support, officers said, while Madaan used to mobilise the cheated funds in US bank accounts and transfer them to accounts of the call centre in India. Gagan Lamba is stil at large and efforts are on to arrest him, police said.

According to officers aware of the matter, the matter came to light after the FBI approached the Delhi Police through the Interpol wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation with details of cyber criminals who were operating call centres in Delhi and adjoining areas to defraud senior citizens in the US.

Explaining the modus operandi, DCP Gautam said the accused would send pop-up ads about some alleged issue with their operating system to senior citizens who are not tech-savvy. “On contacting a designated number, the target was convinced to pay a certain amount of money to fix the so-called technical glitch by taking over the control of the computer of the victim through voluntarily-shared code of any RDP (remote desktop programme) like AnyDesk or LogMeIn,” the DCP said.

Police said they have recovered two laptops and three mobile phones, and further investigation into the case is underway.