Gautam Buddha Nagar police arrested 84 persons working at a call centre in Noida on Thursday for allegedly duping hundreds of US nationals within a period of four months. Officials said the call centre executives cheated US nationals by posing as personnel of the Social Security Administration (SSA) department of the United States, which assigns nine-digit social security numbers (SSNs) to people. Noida police officials said that they had received a tip-off that an illegal call centre was being run from a rented premises in sector-6, Noida. “On Wednesday, a team of policemen searched the office after the tip-off and we found that 84 persons were working there and involved in duping US nationals. All of them were arrested later. A total of 150 computer sets, 13 mobile phones, a server along with router, Rs 20 lakh in cash, 42 printouts of their scripts, and two certificates were recovered from the spot,” said Shakti Mohan Avasthy, ADCP, Noida. He further said that during questioning, the accused revealed that they would convince their targets that their social security number was being used for criminal activities. The accused would then ask the victims to share their bank details and the latter would end up losing money from their accounts, he added. "The evidence gathered by us shows that they have committed fraud of more than Rs 50 crore. Although it is not yet clear how many people were cheated by this fake call centre, it is definitely in the hundreds. They had sent voice messages to around 4 lakh numbers claiming that their social security number had been compromised and asked them to call a helpline number. The mastermind of the gang namely Yogesh Pujari and Harshit are on the run. We have formed a team to arrest them at the earliest, after that we would be able to get more details about their operation," added the ADCP. An official said the accused had accessed the numbers of the US nationals through the dark web. The official said a total of 46 men and 38 women have been arrested in the case. A case under IPC sections 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and section 66 of IT Act has been registered in Phase-1 police station.
