Noida: 23 arrested from eight fake call centres for duping foreign nations

As many as 23 people were arrested during raids at eight fake call centres in Noida and Greater Noida for allegedly duping foreign nationals, police said Thursday.

The simultaneous crackdown on the fake call centres was launched Wednesday night and continued till Thursday morning, police said.

On October 17, officials from the US and Canadian Police had met their Gautam Buddh Nagar counterparts and discussed about fake call centres active in the district which allegedly duped foreign citizens, especially Canadians and Americans, on the pretext of providing loan, shares or technical support.

"These fake call centres had adopted a similar modus operandi of sending malware to computers in the US, Canada, and other foreign countries and then approach them as being representatives of companies such as Microsoft, Apple and seek money to solve their problems," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ajay Pal Sharma told reporters.

He said the accused purchased the data of their victims from online portals and also from Delhi-based vendors, who are yet to be identified.

"The targets would be sent malware in the form of pop up notifications, which, if clicked, would infect their system. Then the accused would contact them offering technical support and charge them for that," Sharma said.

He said eight fake call centres were raided and police found that though they were not linked yet their modus operandi was similar as they were targeting foreigners.

"The call centres had been operating for the past few months and while most of the arrested accused are graduates (B.Com, B.Tech, Diploma holders etc), some of them even have previous experience of working in call centres," Sharma said.

Officials said they have recovered 34 hard disks, 10 DVRs, 12 servers, computers, laptops, phones, cheque books, phones and Rs 1.5 lakh cash from the accused along with financial details of many foreign citizens.

They said police would appeal for the custody of the accused persons in order to gather more information.

The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 420 (fraud) and related offences besides charges under the Information Technology Act, police said.

(With inputs from agencies.)