Gurgaon: A call centre in Sector 23 was on Saturday evening busted for allegedly duping US citizens on the pretext of blocking social security numbers and forged arrest warrants, the police said on Sunday.
The police said they received a tip-off regarding the fake call centre being run from plot number 3,202 in the sector.
Next, a team raided the call centre late on Saturday evening.
Around 30 employees were found at the spot, an officer said.
During interrogation, the team leader told the police that the call centre had been operational for the past two months and its owners are Jigar Parmar, Maulik, Bhaula and Deepak.
“These men purchased customer data from several websites and uploaded them on their own server.
This information was used by their employees to call the customers,’” said the officer.
On average, 3,000 calls were made per day from the call centre.
ACP Cybercrime Karan Goel said the accused identified themselves as officials of the Social Security Administration or the customs department or even the FBI to the victims.
“They duped the victims by telling them that their social security numbers had been misused.
They also forged arrest warrants with the victims’ details and used it to extract money from them,” Goel told TOI.
The police found various such arrest warrants at the site.
One of them mentioned that the person concerned was in possession of drugs.
The criminals asked the victims to make payments via credit or debit cards or vouchers from brands like Nike, Amazon and Ebay.
“Around 90% cases are with gift vouchers whereas the remaining 10% are with card transactions,” said Goel.
The police have registered an FIR in the case under sections 120-B, 420, 467, 468 and 471 accounting to cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, forgery of valuable security and will, forgery for purpose of cheating and Whoever fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine any 1[document or electronic record] which he knows or has reason to believe to be a forged.
The FIR also includes sections of the 75, 43 and 66d of the Information Technology act.
Three people, including team leader Jarar Haider, Pratesh Patel (technical head) and Nisharg (trainer), have been arrested in the case while the owners are absconding.
Just two days back, the police had busted another such call centre in Sector 65.
Their modus operandi also included calling and threatening people about their SSN getting blocked.
It was the sixth such call centre to be raided in the city.