Fake call centre busted in Ambala, 9 held

Tribune News Service
Ambala, June 9

The special task force (STF) here busted a fake call centre, which was being run at the Ghunghat palace on the Hisar road, in the wee hours today and nabbed nine persons in this regard.

The accused had been duping US citizens since January. They were identified as Chintan and Kunal of Ahmedabad, Lucky, Rishi and Phinton of Maharashtra, Sumit of Rajasthan, Aayan and AJO of Nagaland and Rahul of Gurugram. They were produced before a court, which sent them to three-day police remand.

Accused posed as support employees of Amazon

• The telecallers used to pose as tech support staff of Amazon and officials of the law enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System
• They would tell victims that shopping had been done through their Amazon card account and to stop payment, they used to seek their personal details
• After getting details, they used to hack their accounts by asking the one-time password

DSP STF Ambala unit Kulbhushan said they got a tip-off that Rahul, a resident of Gurugram, Kamal, a resident of Panchkula, and Meddy, a resident of Gujarat, had been running a fake call centre at the palace. During the raid, the accused failed to produce any licence and other documents. While Rahul was arrested from Gurugram, the remaining eight persons were arrested from the call centre. They were managing the entire network. There were 86 boys and 34 girls at the call centre during the raid. The accused were procuring data of US citizens and called nearly 3,000-4,000 persons a day. The palace owner claimed that he had rented his palace to the firm, but was not aware of the activity being run there.

A majority of the telecallers belonged to Nagaland, Gujarat, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Rajasthan. They had been living as PGs in Zirakpur. They were released after recording their statements. The STF recovered 10 laptops, 200 computers, 11 mobiles, Rs 2.50 lakh, a server and other documents from the accused.

A case was registered.

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