Over 90 held in fake call centres bust in Delhi

The Delhi Police's Crime Branch has busted two fake call centres targeting US citizens and arrested over 90 people, officials said on Wednesday.

The call centres were located in Kirti Nagar and Mangolpuri, they said.

Police were informed that an illegal call centre operating from Kirti Nagar area was indulging in large-scale cyber cheating of US citizens on the pretext of revocation of social security number (SSN) in the garb of a travel agency called The Global Airfares, a senior police officer said.

Around 8.30 pm on Tuesday, a police team raided the premises and found around 20-25 people engaged in communicating with the victims.

"It was later found that they were impersonating Social Security Administration Department, USA and engaged in using illegal techniques, VoIP calling, bypassing the legal international long distance (ILD) gateways and cheating US citizens on the pretext of saving people from suspension of their SSN," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Manoj C said.

A total of 30 people, including three women, were involved in the gang and were using high-end technical software for making calls appearing as genuine US numbers, they said.

Amit Tyagi (25), a resident of Burari, introduced himself as owner of the call centre, police said.

Amit further admitted that he runs a similar remote call centre at Mangolpuri by using cloud server. Thereafter, police raided that call centre and found 67 people, including 16 women and two juveniles.

The accused were engaged in cheating US citizens on the pretext of suspension of SSN under the garb of TeleOne E-commerce Agency, police said. Later, Amit said that one Vinay Tyagi, a resident of Kirti Nagar, is his partner.

Amit could not produce any authority or license to run this call centre. The accused would ask the prospective targets to buy gift cards and provide the information to the supervisor on the call for resumption of their suspended account, police said.

These gift coupons were shared with a person abroad who would convert these and wire it to the accounts of the accused in form of deposits, police said.

A total of 82 desktop, five laptop, 84 mobile phones and 48 ID cards were seized from the spot, police said, adding that further investigation is underway.