Delhi: Call centre duping foreign nationals busted, 2 arrested

Delhi Police Crime Branch busted a fake call centre in South East Delhi and arrested 2 people for allegedly cheating United States citizens on the pretext of providing tech services.

Delhi Police Crime Branch busted a fake call centre in South East Delhi and arrested 2 people for allegedly cheating United States citizens on the pretext of providing tech services. According to officials, the two accused persons have been identified as Prakash Vishwakarma (42), a resident of Noida and Barkatullah Khan, a resident of Delhi.

In this regard, a case under sections 419/420/120B/34 of Indian Penal Code (IPC), 66D IT Act and 20/20A/21 Indian Telegraph Act have been registered and an investigation has been taken up. On March 7, secret information was received at PS Cyber/SED that a Fake International call centre is being operated in the area of PS Badarpur where US citizens are being cheated on the pretext of providing tech services.

On the basis of this information, a team led by inspector Kuldeep, SHO/PS Cyber/SED conducted a raid at Mohan Cooperative Industrial Estate Mathura Road, New Delhi where a person namely Prakash Vishwakarma was found running a call centre. Besides him, there were 36 other persons (including two females) who were working in this call centre as telecallers. They were entrusted with the work of attending calls of US citizens impersonating themselves as employees of leading firm waredot.com and used to charge hefty amounts from the victims on the pretext of providing tech support.

"During interrogation, it was found that the accused persons with the help of Google Add. optimization, used to run ads in the US region using keywords like Geek Support, tech Support and Microsoft support etc. As and when any person searched on Google for technical support, the ads of accused persons used to Pop Up on the top of the screen as a sponsored link. By clicking this link, the victim landed to a website namely waredot.com with a contact number of accused persons. On clicking that number the inbound call were directed to the call centre of accused persons where the telecaller first attended the inbound call impersonating himself/ herself as an employee/software engineer from the call centre of waredot.com Company, based in the US itself," the official said. After convincing the caller to provide tech support and after gaining the trust of the victim, they used to get the money transferred in a US-based bank account being managed by one of the associates namely Deepankar Jana. As and when the money was transferred in this account, they started ignoring the calls of victims without providing any tech support. The cheated money initially went to the US Bank Account from where it was transferred in the Indian bank accounts of the accused persons, he added.

Both the accused have been arrested and 38 telecallers have been bound down in the case, officials said. More details are awaited. (ANI)

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