The Mumbai Police Crime Branch on Friday busted another telecalling racket in the city, where the accused were allegedly cheating U.S. citizens by posing as software experts pretending to ‘clean’ malware from their targets’ computers.
Two people, identified as David Alfonso (22), the alleged mastermind, and Sandip Yadav (28), said to be the technical expert, have been arrested. The police said they were looking for five others. The employees, who were paid on an incentive basis, are being questioned.
According to Crime Branch officers, the lid was blown off the racket following a tip-off.
“Unit IX teams conducted a raid at 58 West, a building near Andheri subway on S.V, Road, and found 40 people using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to make calls. They were provided contact details of U.S. citizens by the accused and would make scores of calls in a single night,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection I) Akbar Pathan said.
The callers, Mr. Pathan said, would contact the targets by posing as executives of a software solutions company, and convince them that some malware had been detected in their computers. They would allegedly pretend to “install” remedial software on their computers, in exchange for a payment of $500 to 700.
“Payments would be accepted in the form of gift cards. The targets were told to give the 16-digit number, after which the cards would be encashed in Indian currency. The racket has been active for at least the last five to six months, and we are still getting a sense of how much money the accused might have made during this time,” Mr Pathan said.
“Prima facie, we suspect that the contact details of the targets could have been bought from hackers on the dark net but we are still verifying this aspect,” he said.
The arrested accused have been charged with cheating under the Indian Penal Code, along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.