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.
As per the police, the cover over an old stepwell, around 50 to 60 feet deep, on which devotees were standing to offering their prayers, caved in, due to which around 30 people fell into it. Panic spread as people started crying after seeing their beloved gasping for life in the deep well.
The comprehensive overhaul of the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes will protect American workers and crack down on foreign outsourcing companies, which exploit these visa programs to deprive qualified Americans of high-skilled jobs. The two visa programmes were created to complement America's high-skilled workforce.
During the meeting, the Chief Minister expressed the concern of the state over the proposed water cess on hydropower plants being implemented by the Himachal Pradesh government. Mann said the water cess should not be implemented as it is against the interests of the state.
The police had earlier arrested K. Harish and J. Malathy, who were also directors of the company. Five more people are still at large in the multi-crore cheating case carried out by the company in the state.
Two Covid-19-related deaths have also been reported in the same time span. The positivity rate of the city has risen to 13.79 per cent. The number of active cases stands at 806 out of which 452 patients are being treated in home isolation.
Lakhimpur Kheri Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Santosh Gupta, said that one staff member was also found Covid-positive during a contact tracing exercise on Sunday after which the entire campus has been turned into a quarantine centre by the Health department. This is the highest number of new Covid cases reported in a district in a day this year.
