Scamsters who routed international calls for quick money arrested in Mumbai

Navi Mumbai: The Navi Mumbai crime branch has unearthed a racket of bogus routing of international calls that cheated the department of telecommunications (DoT) of ₹2

Navi Mumbai: The Navi Mumbai crime branch has unearthed a racket of bogus routing of international calls that cheated the department of telecommunications (DoT) of ₹2.62 crore. The four persons arrested in this regard had established a fake call centre at Mahape, Navi Mumbai, through which international calls to India were diverted via the internet instead of the International Long Distance (ILD) gateway.

After the raid, the police seized items worth ₹7,50,000, including a server and 22 mobile phones. (Bachchan Kumar/ HT PHOTO)

After receiving 14 complaints in the last two months, DoT initiated an investigation. “A few responsible citizens approached our call centre and informed us that every time they got international calls, the number that flashed on the screen was that of an Indian landline,” said Hemant Borale, Director (Security-II), DoT. “That is when we started our own inquiry. After discovering that the servers to divert the calls were at Mahape, we lodged a complaint with the Navi Mumbai police.”

The Navi Mumbai Crime Branch Unit 1 and cyber cell led the investigations in the case. “We found that though the address was of Mahape and there was indeed a board there that said ‘Global Enterprises’ which on paper was running a call centre, the office was always shut. With reverse investigation, we discovered that the call centre had taken 1,500 PRI lines on lease from a service provider. These lines were bugged with a software by the accused, which diverted the international calls via a local router to the receiver,” said Navi Mumbai police commissioner Bipin Kumar Singh. Added deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Suresh Mengade, “The lease agreement between the so-called call centre and the service provider was legal but the purpose for which they used the lines was illegal.”

By maintaining complete secrecy and making sure that the scamsters never got a whiff of the fact that the police were pursuing them, the latter could finally nab them. “Since all of them worked remotely and never went to office, it made tracing them difficult. However, with intense technical investigation, we were able to trace the locations of the four and nabbed all of them at the same time from different parts of Mumbai and Thane,” said senior police inspector Sunil Shinde, Crime Branch Unit 1.

The arrested accused have been identified as Suraj Murali Verma (30), Anup Murali Verma (40), Sajid Jalil Sayyed (36) and Abdul Aziz Firozabadi (42). The complaints that DOT received were from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The accused had completed all the formalities of starting a call centre and acquired a license.

After the raid, the police seized items worth ₹7,50,000, including a server and 22 mobile phones. “We have found that the intention of the accused was only to earn quick money but their act was a threat to the nation, as no agency can monitor important international calls if they have been diverted via a router,” Singh added. Among the calls that were diverted, the highest number were from Australia.

For service providers in foreign countries, making Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls is not illegal. Thus, when the accused approached them to divert their calls via their internet router instead of the ILD gateway at a cheaper rate, it became a profitable business for them. DOT has now appealed to citizens to immediately contact its toll-free number 1800110420/1963 as well as the cyber cell if they receive such international calls.