Delhi Police busts fake call centre posing as Amazon's tech support

The Delhi Police has busted a fake call centre and arrested seven people who allegedly duped foreign nationals by posing as members of Amazon's technical support team, officials said on Friday.

The accused have been identified as Gaurav (24), Amit Anand (46), Ajneesh Rana (37), Aryan Saxena (21), Yogesh Prasad (28), Naveen Kumar (22), and Aman Preet Kaur (24), they said.

The police found that the accused were running an international online cheating racket in west Delhi's Tilak Nagar and were engaged in using illegal techniques and VOIP calling to dupe people.

They found that they were cheating people based in the US by posing as officials of the technical support team of Amazon, a senior police officer said.

On Thursday, the police reached Ganesh Nagar where seven people were found engaged in making calls by impersonating as officials of tech support team of Amazon.

"Three owners -- Gaurav, Anand and Rana and four tele-callers -- Saxena, Prasad, Kumar and Kaur were found involved in cheating," Deputy Commissioner of Police (west) Urvija Goel said.

The accused disclosed that they were engaged in calling foreign nationals by posing as officials of the tech support of Amazon through VOIP calls, the DCP said.

Elaborating on the modus operandi, the police said the foreign nationals were first sent a pre-recorded threatening call claiming to be from Amazon. The victims were told that suspicious transactions had taken place in their Amazon account, police said.

Later, they persuaded the victims to connect with them for resolving that issue, which in reality did not exist. Through this, the accused got remote access to the victim's computer or mobile phones, they said.

When the victim got financially exploited to their maximum, the call was blocked. As the numbers used by the accused were spoofed VOIP numbers, the complainant could neither call them back nor those numbers could be traced, police said.

The accused procured the details of the US resident using illegal techniques, VOIP calling and caller ID spoofing. The magnitude of total cheated amount is estimated to be in crores, police added.