Vanrai police bust fake call centre, arrest six with data of 10,000 US nationals

The mastermind behind the call centre, David George Alphonso, a 22-year-old college dropout, is still at large, and the police are on the lookout for him.

Mumbai: The Vanrai police on Friday busted a call centre in a commercial complex in Goregaon (east) and arrested six persons for allegedly luring American citizens into buying software purportedly to remove malware from their computers, for large sums of money. The police also seized ₹3 lakh in cash from the premises along with hard drives containing data of around 10,000 United States residents.

Representative image

The mastermind behind the call centre, David George Alphonso, a 22-year-old college dropout, is still at large, and the police are on the lookout for him.

According to the police, 25 persons were employed at the call centre in Vihan Commercial Complex in Goregaon (east). They were tasked to speak to American nationals over Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls or over email, and trick them into believing that their computers had a malware (virus) which could be removed by installing software that they would sell for US $100 to $200.

Most employees were either college students or computer science graduates and were promised salaries ranging from ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 a month, said Vanrai police officials, who conducted the raid based on information provided by the Anti-Terrorist Cell (ATC) of Goregaon police station.

The six arrested, Brendon Keith Fernandes (25), Akash Sharad Khere (27), Jaison Mathew (30), James Albukar (25), Shubam Singh (27) and Samson Thomas (27), were produced before a metropolitan magistrate court and remanded to police custody.

Vanrai police officials said that Alphonso was booked in 2018 for running a similar call centre at Andheri (east). Alphonso served 14 days in custody following which he was released on bail. The police have filed a chargesheet in the case.

A resident of Kalina in Santacruz (east), Alphonso had reportedly also studied a course in computers before starting a call centre under the name Visionrate Private Limited in June. He trained the employees on how to speak in an American accent using VOIP, but refrained from coming to the office after that. This modus operandi was employed by him previously as well, a police officer attached to Vanrai police station, said.

“The six arrested, who are close to David, were named in the previous FIR registered at Andheri police station as well, but were not arrested. From the computers and other accessories seized from the office, we found that they had a list of at least 10,000 American nationals whom they were planning to dupe,” said Namdeo Rathod, assistant police inspector at Vanrai police station.

The cops are in the process of analysing the data on the hard drives and computers seized from the call centre, Rathod said.