Fake call centre: Detained employees let go, teams formed to trace kingpins

The police on Saturday constituted three teams to arrest the masterminds behind a fake call centre that was busted on Friday in Udyog Vihar, Phase 4. The police

The police on Saturday constituted three teams to arrest the masterminds behind a fake call centre that was busted on Friday in Udyog Vihar, Phase 4. The police had detained 32 workers for allegedly duping residents of the United States of America (USA) and Mexico, by posing as employees of an e-commerce company, of money through gift cards, but the masterminds evaded the police.

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The detained employees were let go on Saturday after their statements were recorded, the police said.

According to the police, the masterminds allegedly duped Americans by posing as law enforcement officials and threatening to cancel their social security numbers (SSN) if they did not pay ‘a fine’. More than 1,000 Americans were duped, the police said.

Karan Goel, assistant commissioner of police, DLF, said that they have recovered data of at least 5,000 American citizens and that they were duped of crores of rupees. “We have recovered 15 hard disks, the script meant to dupe the US citizens, computers, laptops and gift cards of paid apps,” he said.

The police said they received a tip-off last week that a group in the city was running a fake call centre and it took them a few days, with the help of cybercrime police teams and informers, to locate it. “We had conducted an internal investigation and our teams visited the call centre on a few occasions, after we received a number of complaints from users in the USA over the last three months. We will get the recovered hard disks scanned, along with their systems, to get an exact number of people targeted since this call centre was started,” said Goel.

The police said the confiscated hardware will be sent to a laboratory in Madhuban of Karnal for forensic examination.

Goel said the owner of the call centre, three months ago, had hired young men, most of whom were from the northeastern states and Uttar Pradesh, and were class 10 and 12 pass outs. Thirty workstations were set up and a week’s training was given to them, along a script, the police said. They had also set up a toll-free number, from which they received calls from their targets, the police said.

The police said the suspects had developed several fake websites, which would direct the victims to call the toll-free number for assistance. The police estimate that the masterminds made over ₹1 crore in the last three months as the workers were paid ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 per month.