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.
Among the H and L, the H-1B and L-1 are among the most popular non-immigrant work visas in the US. In October this year, the US Embassy in India released over 1,00,000 appointments for H and L visas for workers and their families to cut down the wait time.
Eight persons who were critically injured people have been admitted to the Orai Medical College in Jalaun district, said police. According to reports, a gas stove lit up by a cook triggered the blaze, which spread to a nearby wooden structure.
The state government, in a counter-affidavit, said the Excise Department has been regularly carrying out massive enforcement drives against manufacture and use of illicit homemade liquor/spurious liquor. The state government's response came after the Supreme Court expressed concern at increasing illicit liquor trade in the state.
As a precautionary measure to contain and control the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, the Kartarpur Corridor was temporarily suspended from March 16, 2020. With the improvement in the Covid-19 situation, the corridor was reopened to pilgrims on November 17, 2021.
The blood samples were also recovered, from bathroom and kitchen, by forensic officials in the Chattarpur house, where both Poonawalla and Walkar had shifted on May 15, three days before her murder.
The injured have been admitted to a nearby hospital. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has expressed grief at the incident and directed officials to ensure proper treatment to the injured.
