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Police bust two call centres duping American nationals from Hinjewadi
In the first raid conducted by the cyber cell at Sky High Solution, the call centre owner, manager, and seven others were caught contacting American nationals using various softwares and pretending to be calling from the American Medical Health department.
PUNE: Pimpri Chinchwad police raided two call centres on Thursday night and Friday in Hinjewadi Phase 2 after getting information that they were allegedly engaged in duping American nationals. Following the raids, jointly carried out by the cyber cell and crime branch unit 2, four individuals were arrested and 23 employees booked.
The arrested accused include the owner of the call centre, Sky High Solution, Sagar Kumar Yadva, 32, a resident of Hinjewadi, and Anand Pankaj Sinha, 29, the manager of the centre and a resident of Vrindavan Society, Wagholi. Seven other employees of the centre were booked.
In another raid, the crime branch arrested Dhananjay Sahebrao Kasar, 25, from Man, the owner of the call centre, Tech Law Solution, and the manager, Harshad Shankar Khamkar, 28, from Hinjewadi. Eleven other employees of the centre were booked.
Shivaji Pawar, deputy commissioner of police (crime) Pimpri Chinchwad police, said, “Based on information, we formed two different teams of cyber cell and crime branch unit 2 and raided two places in Hinjewadi phase 2, where illegal call centres were being operated to dupe American nationals. We seized 20 hard disks, three laptops, and recovery of data is going on.”
He added that a total of 23 individuals have been booked in two different cases and the court granted police custody to the arrested accused till November 18.
In the first raid conducted by the cyber cell at Sky High Solution, the call centre owner, manager and seven others were caught contacting American nationals using various softwares and pretending they were calling from the American Medical Health department.
Elaborating the modus operandi, senior police inspector Ravikiran Nale of cyber cell, Pimpri Chinchwad, said, “The accused were calling up US nationals and informing them of side effects of medicines, pesticides and talcum powders, like cancers and other diseases. They used to collect their data by convincing them to get compensation from the manufacturing companies through legal procedures. Later, they used to sell these details to US-based legal firms to earn decent commissions.”
In the other case, the accused were duping American nationals by promising them of improving their CIBIL score. From this call centre, police recovered English scripts from nine computers and two laptops.
In another part of the same building - Gera Imperial - the accused were found using pseudo names for calling US citizens and applying a similar modus operandi to collect information from customers and earn money by sharing the data with US-based legal firms.
Arvind Pawar, senior police inspector of crime branch unit 2, said, “The prime accused had earlier worked with similar call centres in other states. After acquiring experience, they hired engineers and B.Tech students, and set up the call centres in Hinjewadi. They have been in operation from six months to one year.”
This is the latest in a series of call centres duping American nationals being busted by police in Maharashtra. Following guidelines from the Union Home Ministry, police had earlier busted such call centres in Thane, Pune, Nashik and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
