Mohali police arrest 155 call centre employees for duping US citizens

Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav said, “The preliminary investigations have revealed that the fake call centres were operating during the night and the callers were used to dupe foreign nationals by making them purchase gift cards of Target, Apple, Amazon, etc.” These gift cards used to be collected and shared with the kingpins by a team manager. The kingpins would then redeem the gift cards, he added.

How the police found out about the fake call centres

V Neeraja, ADGP Cyber Crime, while addressing a press conference, said, “The intelligence inputs about fake call centres was developed by Inspector Gaganpreet Singh and Inspector Daljit Singh along with their team with technical assistance from the digital investigation training and analysis centre (DITAC) lab of cybercrime.”

Neeraja said after zeroing in on the locations, police teams, under the supervision of SP Cybercrime Jashandeep Singh, led by DSP Prabhjot Kaur, raided the fake call centres.

The modus operandi

Broadly, the callers used three different ways to dupe gullible people living in the US.

Payday Fraud: The callers targeted people in the US with low credit scores and offered them low-interest loans. The callers would make the victims buy gift cards to facilitate the loans. However, the moment a victim would buy a gift card, the kingpin would redeem it. Payday is a platform to transfer money overseas.

Amazon Fraud: Under this modus operandi, the callers would scare the victims by posing as representatives of Amazon. The callers would say that a parcel ordered by them has illegal items and that the federal police will be informed. The scamsters would then demand money via some cash app or in the form of an Amazon gift card to get the order cancelled.

A separate caller, pretending to be a banker, would confirm how much money is to be paid and the account number where the payment has to be made. Often, the victims would also be asked to buy gift cards.

The numbers on these gift cards would be shared with the partners of the fraudsters sitting in the US and immediately redeemed. The money would later be sent to the kingpins in India through hawala.

According to the police, brokers provide customer information data to the fake call centres and the software data mine the target group for the fraudulent calls.

Microsoft Scam: Victims would receive a pop-up on their computer screens seemingly from Microsoft saying that their system is compromised and a contact number is given to be called immediately. Once a person would call, a link would be shared with them to download a screen viewing app on their computers. Subsequently, money would fraudulently be transferred to mule accounts in the US and then received in India through the hawala.

Materials seized

The arrested accused used to work as diallers, closers, bankers and floor managers. The ADGP further said that police teams have also recovered 79 desktop computers, 204 laptops, mobile phones and other accessories etc, besides scripts for training to talk to the customers.

Neeraja said that out of the total 155 arrested, 18 have been taken in police remand and the rest have been sent on judicial remand. Further investigation to ascertain the total fraud committed is in progress, she said, while adding that more arrests are expected in the coming days.

An FIR has been registered under Sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security) 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology (IT) Act at State Cyber Crime Cell Police Station.