Gurgaon: A call centre that allegedly cheated thousands of US citizens through fraudulent transactions on the pretext of cancelling their social security number, making crores of rupees, was busted in Gurgaon on Tuesday. It is the 11th instance of a bogus operation like this coming to the fore this year.
Run by three partners, none of whom had a technical degree, the call centre shifted base frequently and was operating from Sector 27 when police carried out a raid on Tuesday night. Two months ago, it was located in Sushant Lok. While two of the accused, Anurag Tiwari and Kirti Kumar Kesav, both from Jind, were arrested from the call centre, the third partner, Lokendra Wasi from Ahmedabad, was not present there at the time. He is on the run.
“They had been involved in this business for the past one and a half years and kept changing the location of the call centre every few months to evade police,” said Inderjeet Yadav, DSP, CM Flying Squad.
The trio had hired nearly 30 employees for outbound calls and provided them accommodation, meals and cab facilities. The staffers were paid a fixed salary between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 per month and also received incentives equivalent to this amount or more, depending on the number of ‘customers’ they duped, thus earning about Rs 45,000 to Rs 50,000 a month. The owners were paying a monthly rent of Rs 2.5 lakh for office space in Sector 27.
“They used to hire youngsters with previous experience in call centres and then train them in dealing with their targets. Each of them was given a script to follow while speaking to the US citizens,” DSP Yadav said.
Talking about the modus operandi, inspector Harish from the flying squad said, “This was an outbound call centre wherein employees used to call US nationals and threaten to cancel their social security number. They would demand anywhere between $100 and $500 to ‘restore’ their social security number.”
Once the target picked up the call and the script was delivered, the call was transferred to another employee, who convinced the person to make the payment through gift cards.
A case was registered against the three accused under sections 406 (fraud) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC and sections 75 (offence committed outside India), 43 (unauthorised access) and 66 (fraud using computer resource) of the IT Act at Cyber police station.
Since January this year, police have busted 11 call centres operating in Gurgaon that duped people and arrested a total of 29 people. All of them have been released on bail. Police said conviction in such cases has been a problem area in the absence of witnesses appearing before court. Till date, not a single person has been convicted. “So far, those accused of operating such call centres, which are used to dupe foreign nationals, have gone scot-free in the absence of testimonies from the victims. Police are trying to plug this loophole,” said a police officer from Cyber police station.
ACP (DLF) Karan Goyal said they plan to use the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to get the details of victims in the US with the help of the FBI. They have sought details of nearly 100-150 victims and their legally vetted statements. MLAT is an agreement between two or more countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public or criminal laws.