Gurugram: Fake call centre targeting US citizens busted, 14 held
Darpan News Desk IANS, 08 Jun, 2023 10:46 AM
Gurugram, June 8 (IANS) A team of the Cyber Crime police station has busted a fake call centre in Gurugram district and arrested 14 people, including three women and the call centre owner, during the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, the police said.
The fake call centre was operating from Universal Trade Tower, Sector-49, and cheated US citizens in the name of tech support and charged $100 to $500 as service charges, via gift card, Amazon, Paypal and Cash app.
The suspects have been identified as Aditya, the call centre operator, Ankit Chadda, Akash Sain, Suraj Mishra, Ayush Saxena, Hemant Sharma, Sanjeev Shukla, Ajay Kumar, Ashutosh Sharma, Pankaj Kumar, Tushar Kumar, Rajdeepa Das Gupta, Deevika and Manisha.
During questioning, the accused revealed that Aditya Singh, the owner of the call centre, had hired the remaining suspects on salary/commission for customer service.
"The employees were employed at the call centres, which were being operated without permission. Also, the centre did not have any license issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DOT)," police added.
"Aditya Singh disclosed that he and all his accomplices listen to the calls coming on the toll-free number through REAL PBX DAILER in different ways after taking different orders, they used to create problems for the customers by talking about cancelling the order and then cheated them in the name of solving the same problem. After cheating, they used to change the toll-free number also."
"The police also found that when the customer used to call on the toll-free number shown by him (Aditya Singh), that call was connected to the accused through their vendor. If the customer told them about their problem, they would first take them into confidence to solve their problem and in the name of solving their problem, they would get remote access to their system through applications like Anydesk, TeamViewer, UltraViewer etc. They also used to tell the customers about other problems, including risk of personal information, account hacking by hacker, device insecure, financial information leak and child pornography etc. and dupe the victims," Vipin Ahlawat, Assistant Commissioner Of Police (Cybercrime), said.
Five mobile phones and 14 laptops have been recovered from the possession of all the accused persons.
In connection with the matter, an FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including the IT Act, has been registered at the Cyber Crime police station (East) for further investigation.
For last three days, Rahul Gandhi was grilled for about 30 hours in total by a three-member ED team. On Wednesday, the Congress leader's questioning ended at around 10 p.m. but he left the ED headquarters at around 11:45 p.m.
The police have identified four shooters behind the crime, an official statement said. Moosewala, who left his house at around 5 p.m. on May 29 along with two persons -- Gurwinder Singh and Gurpreet Singh (cousin) -- was shot dead by unidentified people.
The official added that a case was registered on September 25, 2020, against the private firm and others on the allegations of causing losses to the tune of Rs 2040.63 crore to the consortium of 12 banks led by PNB.
The CBI had registered a case on April 13, 2016 on the request of Chandigarh Administration and had taken over the investigation of the FIR earlier registered at Police Station, Sector-26, Chandigarh.
Bishnoi, who was brought from New Delhi after procuring the transit remand from Patiala House court, was produced in a Mansa court in Punjab at around 4 a.m. amid high-level security after his medical check-up.
