Gurugram: Sham call centre busted in Sector 40, five held

GURUGRAM: A team of Gurugram police busted yet another bogus call centre in Sector 40 and arrested five persons on Thursday. The call centre, operating for the past 7 months, would cheat US citizens with a modus operandi similar to the one adopted by other sham centres busted in the past few months.
ACP (DLF) Karan Goel said the accused would purchase details of US citizens from different sources and then send recorded voice messages in bulk, say 3,000 to 4,000, at a time. The messages would threaten to block the social security number of the recipient, saying the number had been used to commit fraud. It would ask the recipient to “press 1” for a solution.
No sooner did the recipient press 1, his call would be directed to the call centre in Gurugram. The person receiving the call would ask the US citizen to pay up anything between $800-1,000 to escape departmental action. The targets were asked to make payments through gift cards. The details of the cards would then be sent to another person, who would redeem them and send the money to the accused after keeping a commission.
A case has been registered against the five arrested persons under sections 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and sections 66D and 75 of the IT Act at Cyber police station.
“The easy availability of personal data from around the world and a large English-speaking population in the city make it easier for gangs to target US citizens,”Goel said. These gangs, he added, usually have three groups — one that collects the personal data of targets, another that operates the call centre and a third that diverts the money received from gift cards.
Since these three groups operate from different locations and time zones, it is difficult for a particular police force to act against all of them.
Many such call centres have been busted across Delhi-NCR of late. This year, 13 bogus call centres have been unearthed in Gurugram. In comparison, 10 such call centres were busted in the city in the whole of 2020. The number of arrests has also been showing an increasing trend. Against 52 arrests last year, police have already picked up 48 people in the first seven months of 2021. Despite the police action, all the accused have had to be released on bail for lack of evidence.