Unauthorised call centre busted, 11 held for duping US citizens

The Kurukshetra police have busted an unauthorised call centre in Ladwa that was allegedly defrauding US citizens. The accused used to pose as officials of different agencies and dupe people by telling them their accounts were involved in the narcotics trade.

The police have arrested 11 accused from the unauthorised call centre on Friday night. The accused were identified as Mohit Setia and Vinod Kumar of Karnal, Paramjeet Singh, Vijay Chhetri, and Rohit Malhotra of Delhi, Nitin Rana and Akash of Yamunanagar, Amit Paul of Manipur, Jitender Kumar of Uttar Pradesh, Noor Husain of Assam, and Akash, a resident of Kerala. The accused are in the age group of 20-25 years. Most of the accused are Class XII pass, while some are college dropouts.

Teams of the cybercrime police station led by Additional SP Prateek Gahlot were working on this case. The police have recovered 47 LCD screens, 45 CPUs, 42 keyboards and 18 headphones. They have been running the call centre for nearly two years.

Kurukshetra SP Nitish Agarwal said following a technical input received, three teams of the Kurukshetra police led by Additional SP conducted a raid last evening and 11 accused were arrested. They belong to different cities and states. They were given Rs 18,000-Rs 20,000 per month. While hiring, they used to be told that it was a call centre but they were aware that they were duping people.

“The accused used to be provided with a script on the computer and they were given the training about how to trap their victims. They used to be given proper English-speaking training, and they used to be told how to engage the victims. The accused used to pose as officials from the police or narcotics departments and told the victim that their accounts were linked with the drug trade, then obtained information about their accounts, then made them talk to another person, who used to pose as a senior official, to settle the case. Once the victim was trapped, they used to ask him to send money in their bitcoin wallets, and later convert these into rupees”, the SP said.

The SP said the accused used to get salaries in cash and during further investigation, others involved in the case would be arrested. Their belongings were recovered from the call centre and it suggested that some of them were staying at the call centre only, while the others were staying in PGs. Further investigation is underway and efforts are being made to catch their team leader. They have links with people in Delhi and other states.

“They were working in corporate style and people had their defined roles. They had the arrangements to run a call centre with a capacity of 45-50 persons. A special investigation team has been formed to further investigate the matter in detail. The investigation is at its preliminary stage and the number of victims, the accused and the money trail will be ascertained during the investigation,” the SP said.