Punjab Police busts two fake call centres duping people living in US; 155 held

Representational images. Pic/iStock

Director General of Police (DGP) Punjab Gaurav Yadav announced here on Friday that the Cyber Crime Division of the Punjab Police has raided two fictitious call centres operating in Mohali and detained 155 of their employees for deceiving and making fraudulent calls to individuals residing in the United States. The first fake Call centre was located at Plot at Sector 74 in SAS Nagar, while, the other fake Call Centre was established at A-one Tower at Sector 74 of SAS Nagar. Both the call centres seemed to be run by Gujarat-based kingpins.

Per an ANI report, preliminary investigations, according to DGP Gaurav Yadav, showed that the phoney call centres were open at night, and callers were tricking foreign nationals into buying gift cards from places like Target, Apple, Amazon, and so on using three different strategies. According to him, the owner redeems these gift cards once a team manager shares them.

At a press conference, ADGP Cyber Crime V Neeraja stated that information about fictitious call centres targeting foreign nationals living overseas was gathered by Inspectors Gaganpreet Singh and Daljit Singh, along with their team, with technical support from the Digital Investigation Training and Analysis Centre (DITAC) Lab of Cybercrime.

She said that after zeroing in on the locations, Police teams under the supervision of SP Cybercrime Jashandeep Singh, led by DSP Prabhjot Kaur raided both the fake Call centres on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, and arrested all the 155 employees who were working as Diallers, Closers, Bankers and Floor Managers. However, both the kingpins are absconding and police teams are working to nab them, she added.

In addition to scripts for customer service training, she stated that police teams had also found 204 laptops, 79 desktop computers, mobile phones, and other accessories. According to ADGP V Neeraja, of the 155 people detained, 18 employees were placed under police remand, and the remaining detained individuals were all placed under judicial remand. She stated that more inquiries are underway to determine the entire amount of fraud committed and that more apprehensions are anticipated in the next few days.

An FIR has been registered under sections 419, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology (IT) Act at Police Station State Cyber Crime Cell.

(With Inputs from ANI)