Bengaluru cops bust call centres set up to cheat US citizens

Bengaluru Police have busted two fake call centres in the city that were used to con thousands of American citizens through a web of deceit and data theft.

Acting on specific information, police raided two offices of Ethical Infotech Pvt Ltd in Gayatri Tech Park and Silver Soft Tech Park on Thursday night and arrested 11 kingpins and 72 telecallers.

Police have also seized 136 laptops, 127 desktops, hard disks, pen drives, mobile phones, three cars, and two minibuses from the accused. Two separate cases have been registered in Whitefield CEN Crime police station against the accused persons under the Information Technology Act and IPC sections 419 and 420 (cheating).

The arrested kingpins, hailing from different places in Gujarat, were running the racket in Bengaluru for the last eight months after Covid-19 restrictions were relaxed.

The telecallers are unemployed graduates from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. They knew that the operation was illegal and were paid 20 per cent commission of the money made from each victim, police said.

Police said they are still gathering details on the ingenious crime that could be running into crores.

The gang had multiple modus operandi, but it usually began with an accomplice in the US making available to the call centre data of US citizens having accounts in Target, Walmart and Amazon.

The kingpins — who had set up three layers, callers, bankers and closures— took over from here to execute the crime.

The caller used to initiate the conversation and inform them about either a fraudulent transaction in their account, or about lottery and gift cards. They would also tell them that bankers are going to contact them for further process.

The telecallers used to call the target within a few minutes introducing themselves as bank staff and collect details of the target's account and other vital information.

Closures came into the picture at the end, scooping up the remaining information and getting the code (social security numbers) from the victims.

On getting the code, money of the victim would be siphoned off via untraceable money transfer applications such as Amazon gift cards, cryptocurrency and even wire transfers.

The accomplice also used to send messages to targets in the US, luring them to click the link in the message which subsequently used to alert telecallers in Bengaluru who would get in touch with them.

The arrested kingpins have been identified as Rishivyas, Prathik, Syed, Parikh Biren, Karan, Jitiya Kishan, Hett Patel, Bihang, Raj Lalih Soni, Vishal Parmar, and Mitesh Gupta.

Of these, Rishivyas and Prathik are the main accused in Bengaluru who had contact with the accomplice staying in the US.

Police commissioner C H Pratap Reddy said, "The accused have not targeted any Indian citizens. We are yet to ascertain the details of the total amount they have earned by the fraud."

S Girish, deputy commissioner of police (Whitefield), said the accused persons are being questioned to know how the racket was being run. We are going to pass on the information to the US Embassy so that the accused in the US is nabbed, he added.

"We have seized around Rs 33 lakh in cash from the accused persons. Apart from cyber fraud, the accused persons are also involved in hawala. The siphoned money used to reach the fraudsters through hawala," Girish said, adding the telecallers were paid around 20 per cent commission from the money they made from each victim.

Sources said that the hawala transaction was being done through Hong Kong and Thailand.