38 arrested from fake call centre

Police busted an illegal call centre at Gurugram Sector 20 and arrested 38 employees, said officials on Saturday

Police busted an illegal call centre at Gurugram Sector 20 and arrested 38 employees, said officials on Saturday.

38 arrested from fake call centre

The call centre was allegedly extorting money from people on the pretext of recovering loans taken through loan disbursing applications in Delhi-NCR (national capital region) and other neighbouring areas, said the police.

Police have identified the arrested suspects as call centre owners Shantanu Kaushik, 35, and Abhinav Vashishtha, 26 — residents of Delhi’s Phoont Kalan and Jhajjar’s Kheri Hojdarpur.

Police said ‘Targeting Solutions Private Limited’ had been running on the first floor of a building in Udyog Vihar’s Phase I since November 2021, and was raided around 2pm on Friday. The call centre had been extorting money on the pretext of recovering loans for nearly 35 loan applications, which were believed to be Chinese. These applications could be downloaded only through URLs sent to any specific receiver and not on Play Store, said the police.

Gurugram deputy commissioner of police (headquarters) Ashtha Modi said that the owners were arrested after they failed to produce a licence to run the centre or an agreement with a party for working as recovery agents on its behalf. The search was conducted after inspector Bijender Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Cybercrime police station, received several complaints on how people who had taken loans from the applications in question were being blackmailed and extorted money by sending morphed nude photographs to them and their relatives through WhatsApp, said the DCP.

A case was registered against the arrested suspects under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology Act at the Cybercrime police station on Friday night.

Assistant commissioner of police (crime) Preet Pal Sangwan said, “The call centre was working as recovery agents for several Chinese loan applications.” The suspects had been extorting money from the people by threatening them with their morphed photographs even after full repayment.

The callers used to threaten and pressure the victims to make payments much before the due dates of the loans, said Sangwan, adding, “All the callers, including the women, were well aware that they had been extorting the loan borrower. They sent morphed nude pictures of the victims to them and their relatives, along with threat messages using an instant chat messenger.”

The ACP also said that two employees of the call centre used to hack the cellphones of the victims and gain access to their photographs and contact list. “Another set of members morphed their photographs, and the callers forwarded the morphed photographs and threat messages to the victims,” he said.

SHO Singh, meanwhile, said, “The call centre staff has extorted nearly ₹2 crore from a large number of people till date. They made phone calls to around 700 people on a daily basis, and extorted money from them.”

Singh said that the main suspects — Kaushik and Vashishtha — used to get details of the victims on their cellphones through WhatsApp. “It included their user ID and password created after downloading the applications, which could be only used in English or Chinese language for loans. They used the details to hack into the victim’s cellphones,” Singh said, adding that the police are investigating if the owners of these applications were also involved in the crime, and shared the users’ details from China or somebody from India was involved in it.

“We found out that another two suspects —Pradeepand Manish —used to reach the centre every four to five days to collect the money extorted from the victims. On Friday, too, they had reached the call centre, but managed to leave the place before the raid,” he added.

Singh also said that employees of the call centre were given daily targets for calling people and extorting money from them through UPI IDs. “About 20% of money extorted from a caller in a day was the commission for the employee who made the phone call. The remaining money was collected by Pradeep and Manish, after giving a 25% cut to the owners,” he said.

The SHO said that the police have got a five-day remand of the two arrested owners, team leader Sandeep, and one Himanshu for interrogation. “Two UPI IDs on the name of Himanshu were used for extorting money from the victims,” he said, adding that the police are trying to create a database of the victims from whom they have extorted money so far.