Police bust fake call centre cheating Canadian citizens, 13 arrested

The Gurugram cyber police busted a fake call centre which duped Canadians in the name of providing technical support by posing as representatives of Microsoft. The police have arrested 13 accused, including the call centre team leader and two women. Twelve laptops and three mobile phones were recovered from their possession.

This fake call centre was being operated from a rented house in Sushant Lok Phase 3. The centre was allegedly cheating foreign nationals on the pretext of providing technical assistance to them in the name of Microsoft. An FIR has been registered at the cybercrime police station (South) for fraud under the provisions of IT Act.

Inspector Naveen Kumar, SHO of cybercrime police station (South), got a tip-off that the fake call centre was being run from a rented house in B-block of Sushant Lok Phase 3. Inspector Kumar along with his team conducted a raid at the house last night where men and women were busy on computers and laptops. A majority were busy making calls in English using their headphones and working on their systems. They did not possess any valid licences of the Department of Telecommunications or any other agreement/MoU related to their work.

According to the police, the arrested accused were identified as Vishal Dubey, Shubham Dubey, Harshit Mishra, Ravi Kaushik, Saurabh Tanwar, Akshat Kundu, Ankit Chauhan, Akshay, Prince, Suraj, Devansh, Nishi Shukla and Diti Shukla. The accused Suraj is the team leader of the call centre and he runs it along with his colleagues and employees. Employees at the call centre used to get a salary of about Rs 30,000 per month.

“These people dupe foreign citizens in the name of providing customer care service of Microsoft Support by sending viruses to the computers of Canadian citizens through pop-ups, in which their toll-free number is written. When foreign citizens call on their toll-free number, they lie to them that their banking information, phone calls, photos etc are being leaked and going to hackers by claiming to be representatives of Microsoft. After this, in the name of solving the problems of foreign citizens, they get remote access to their systems by making them download screen sharing applications on their computers. After this, they charge 300 to 500 dollars from them through gift cards. They extorted money fraudulently from customers through gift vouchers,” said Priyanshu Dewan, ACP, cybercrime cell.