Three held for operating fake call centre in Udyog Vihar

The chief minister’s Flying Squad on late Friday night raided a fake call centre, which had been operating out of a building in Udyog Vihar Phase-2 for the past four months

The chief minister’s Flying Squad on late Friday night raided a fake call centre, which had been operating out of a building in Udyog Vihar Phase-2 for the past four months. Three persons were arrested, including the call centre owner. The police also recovered data of US citizens from their possession.

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The police said there were around 35 telecallers, who were found making calls when they raided the call centre.

Inderjeet Yadav, deputy superintendent of police, crime investigation department (CID), said that on Friday night, they received a tip-off that a fake call centre is operational and that the owner was present at the spot. “When the team reached the building, a few of executives were seen walking down and having tea. We followed them and saw that the call centre was fully operational. When we asked the manager to explain the work, he got frightened and tried to mislead us,” he said.

Yadav said the executives used to collect information, such as names, mobile numbers, e-mails and later sent them a voice mail. They trapped them after offering them a grant by the US government. “They used to ask victims to purchase Google cards, and then redeemed 100 to 500 dollars from their cards. Through this, they managed to dupe more than ₹50 lakh from over 600 people in the last four months,” he said.

The Flying Squad has busted eight such call centres over the last six months and has also carried out a mapping of the areas from where illegal call centres have been found to be operating across the city. In the latest raid, the police seized two laptops, two pen drives, five mobile phones and hard disks from the call centre.

A case under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document as genuine) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 43, 66D and 75 of the IT Act was registered at Cyber Crime police station in the wee hours of Saturday. The police said suspects did not possess any valid OSP(Other Service Providers) licences from the Department of Telecommunications or any other agreement or MoU related to their work.

Harish Budhiraja, inspector, chief minister’s Flying Squad, said that they had conducted a reconnaissance of the area and were sure of the operations of the fake call centre. “The executives used to make calls and inform the US citizens that the government was offering grant. They used to print a coloured forged cheque to show them the amount sanctioned and used to charge money from them. They used to target two kind of customers — first those who were keen on taking the grant and second who had a low credit score,” he said.

Budhiraja said with the help of cyber police and local police station, a raid was carried out on the second floor of the building. “They had a script in front of them and were speaking in English in an American accent using their headphones. They were asking the customers to transfer the money to an account holder in US and later transfer it through a gift card,” he said.

The police said the telecallers were explaining the victims that they were providing government grants like loans at zero percent interest. They used to offer them grants anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 and duped them by deducting $100 to 500 dollars from their Google cards.

The suspects were identified as Sarjeet Kumar (21) of Jhunjunu in Rajathan, who is the owner of the call centre, Kapil Dev (32) of Ahmedabad, and Bhudev Lohar (27) of Dungarpur in Rajasthan.

The suspects, during questioning, revealed that they had duped more than 600 US citizens so far.

The police said the suspects were produced before the local court on Saturday and were taken on a one-day police remand for further investigation.