Fake call centre busted in Delhi, 6 arrested

New Delhi, July 20 (IANS) A fake call centre has been busted in the national capital, and six persons who used to dupe foreign nationals in the name of Microsoft technical support have been arrested in this connection, an official said on Wednesday.

The arrested individuals have been identified as Abhishek Chhabra (31), Rahul Gupta (24), Pushkar Raj (23), Aditya Dhankar (23), Arpit Chaudhary (23) and Ashish Vaswani (25).

According to the official, the main accused, Abhishek Chhabra was running the fake call-centre for the last one month.

The victims of the scam are mainly the people residing in the foreign countries.

The accused used to send pop-ups to the computers of such unsuspecting people that their system has been compromised and they should call at the given number for technical assistance by Microsoft.

When the victim calls, the call comes to this fake call centre through the "X-Lite" app.

"The accused pretended to be from Microsoft technical support assistance team and induced them to give remote access to their computer to them through applications like 'Ultra Viewer' or 'Any desk'. After that, they used to falsely tell the victim that several malicious programmes including malwares, spywares, etc., have been found in their system," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Amit Goel said.

The accused further "cautioned" the victim that their banking credentials might be compromised if immediate remedial steps are not taken.

The victim, fearing for their financial security, would have agreed to pay the amount as asked by the accused.

The payment was made in gift coupon i.e. Target, Google Play etc and the same was being encashed through the grey market.

Upon receiving the payment, the accused persons pretended to clean up the malwares, virus etc. from the victims' system.

All this while, the victim used to be under the impression that they are getting legitimate technical support from Microsoft Inc.

DCP Goel said the police received information on July 18 about a fake call centre that was being run in the Paschim Vihar area of Delhi which duped the US nationals on the pretext of providing technical support to the users of Microsoft and Apple.

Subsequently, a police team was constituted which conducted a raid at the premises and the accused persons were found operating a fake call centre from where calls were being made to unsuspecting people in foreign countries and they were being cheated by the accused who were pretending to be from Microsoft Inc.

During the raid, a total of 7 laptops, 7 headphones, 7 mobile phones, Rs 7.10 lakh in cash, 1 internet router etc., were recovered from the possession of the accused persons. Accordingly, the police registered a case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the IT Act at the Crime Branch police station and all the six accused were arrested.

During the questioning of the accused, and the data recovered from the systems, it was found that the victims were cheated of a total amount of more than Rs 1 crore, in the last one month.