NEW DELHI: Delhi Police arrested 84 people, including a dozen women, in a late night swoop at a call centre for allegedly impersonating Amazon customer service providers and duping US citizens.
DCP (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram said Rs 64.3 lakh in cash and 93 laptops being used by the employees have been seized.
Police were acting on a tip-off that illegal call centre was being run near Tiles Market in Jagatpuri.
This information was further developed and surveillance mounted around the premises located in A block.
After inputs were confirmed, a team led by inspector Vikash raided the premises and found an office set-up in place.
The employees were caught red-handed trying to dupe people on calls.
“The people at the call centre were pretending to be employed by Amazon Inc and used illegal techniques like VOIP calling, bypassing the legal international long-distance gateways,” the DCP said.
According to police, the accused were extorting Amazon customers based in USA by claiming their social security details had been hacked.
During enquiry, it came to fore that one Rakesh was running the set-up on behalf of one Mannu Singh Tanwar.
Tanwar is at present in Bhiwani Jail, Haryana for his involvement in a murder case.
He worked as a liquor vend contractor and was previously arrested by Gurgaon police in September 2020 for running another fake call centre in Gurgaon.
“On being asked about any license and authority to run the call centre, no documents could be produced.
Mobile phones were recovered from the possession of Rakesh and others, which contained various US mobiles numbers in a Whatsapp group,” the DCP added.
The accused told police that they would send fake messages to phone numbers and email IDs of Amazon customers, telling them that 1,000 USD had been credit to their accounts.
When the customer would call back to know more about it, the accused would threaten them saying their security number had been hacked.
The target would be made to pay up in form of gift vouchers from Amazon store, which the accused would redeem later.