GURUGRAM: Three call centres were busted and seven people were arrested on Friday for allegedly cheating people in the US.
While two of the call centres were operating out of a single building in Faridabad and were shut by the chief minister’s flying squad, the third one was in Gurugram.
Since January this year, eight such call centres have been raided in Gurugram and two in Faridabad.
Officials said they all operated in a similar manner and callers would dupe foreign nationals in the name of customer support of leading companies or pose as law enforcement officials.
At the two Faridabad call centres raided on Friday, callers would send voice messages to US citizens through IVR and ask them to call on a toll free number if they wanted to avoid legal action.
Anxious people would dial the number and the calls would be routed to Faridabad.
Those working at the call centres used a five-page script to speak to the US citizens.
They would identify themselves as representatives of a law enforcement agency and threaten to cancel the US citizens’ social security number.
They would cite reasons like “misuse” of social security numbers to threaten the targets.
The callers would ask for a payment of USD 100-500 through gift cards to resolve the issue.
Many US citizens paid up fearing legal action.DSP, CM flying squad, Inderjeet Yadav, said they raided SRS Tower in Sector 31, Faridabad, on Friday and found two call centres in one building.
Five people were arrested — Mohit Singh (24), from Raja Garden, Old Faridabad, Dev Vashisht (31), from Faridabad, Prakash (26), from Ucha Gaon Faridabad, Asif (31), from Raja Garden Faridabad, and Lima (32) from New Delhi.
An FIR has been lodged under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and sections 66D and 75 of the IT Act at the Sector 31 police station.
“The call centres have been running since March.
The accused themselves worked at call centres earlier,” Yadav said.
The call centre in Gurgaon was on the 10th floor of Spaze iTech Park, Sohna Road.
At the time of the raid, eight people were found talking to foreign nationals over the phone.
Two youths who have been running the operations since April, Paras Bajaj, from Sector 67, and Ravinder Kumar, from Sushant Lok-1, have been arrested.
ACP (DLF) Karan Goel said the duo had an understanding with a vendor, Deepak, who would forward calls made by US citizens to them.
They paid Deepak Rs 500 per call.
At the call centre, people would talk to the foreign nationals posing as customer care officials from Amazon or Apple.
“They had a script and would get access to the target’s device.
They would then convince the foreign nationals to pay anything between USD 50-500 through gift vouchers to solve their problem.
The accused would share the gift card number with one Ravinder through WhatsApp.
Once the money was in , the man would transfer it to the duo’s account after keeping 20% commission,” the ACP said.
A case has been lodged under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and sections 66D and 75 of the IT Act at Cyber police station of Gurgaon.
Last year, 15 such call centres were busted in the city, in 2019, five call centres were shut and in 2018, nine call centres were raided.