5 men held in Uttarakhand for defrauding people through fake call centre

Five alleged conmen, including four from Delhi, who defrauded people abroad of money through a fake international call centre here were arrested by a Special Task Force of Uttarakhand police, officials said.

They defrauded people living abroad, especially senior citizens, differently abled persons and retired army officers by acquiring their social security numbers and threatening them on the phone with legal action, police said.

The accused introduced themselves as police officers or representatives of some enforcement agency, they said.

They received money in dollars from which they earned crores of rupees in India.

The fake international call centre was raided by an STF team led by Additional SP Swatantra Kumar and DSP Ankush Mishr late on Thursday night and its employees were interrogated. They revealed that they rang up people living in the US on the basis of a database provided by their associates in Noida.

The accused have been identified as Delhi residents Danish Ali, Sandip Gupta, Narayan Adhikari and Ayushman Malhotra besides Dehradun resident Archit Wilfred.