Delhi fake call centre racket busted

Delhi Police's Special Staff Outer District on Saturday busted a fake call centre, and arrested eight persons, including the kingpin and two women.

Police have seized eight central processing units (CPUs), six laptops and a router from the spot.

The call centre was being run by Ravinder Singh, the kingpin of the gang.

Singh was an employee in a similar call centre earlier, but when his salary was held, he stole CPUs from that call centre.

The CPUs contained data of US citizens, using which he started his own call centre.

The modus operandi of the cheats was that they called at the numbers of the American nationals, and presented themselves as US citizens.

The callers (cheats) were specially trained to speak in US accent.

The police said that they would entrap the innocent citizens by using a fixed dialogue, "Can I speak with........?. I m calling from the loan company. The reason for my call is that a loan amount ......($3000) is sanctioned under your name. Are interested to get it?"

"When the customer says, yes. They verify the credentials of customers. Ask some questions about the loan and purpose, his working status etc. Then one caller passed on the customer to another caller who pretends to be from the finance department to make further progress on loan disbursal," police added.

The gang would then tell the target to purchase a Google pay card/eBay card. Following which they would collect the pin number of this card and transfer the money to their account.

The money trail in this illegal call centre starts as and when the prospective loan seeker procures a Google pay card or eBay card. These cards are purchased in the US for various purposes like for Gym, sports and other utilities in different denominations, police said.

"They then seek the PIN of these cards from holders on the pretext of processing their loan. The broker in between keeps 50 per cent amount and 50 per cent is sent to the call centre owner."

The call centre was very new and was just in the process of setting up its operation of cheating. The place of operation was taken on rent by Singh.