Delhi Police Bust 2 Call Centres Defrauding People In US, Arrest 100

The Delhi police busted two fake international call centres and arrested nearly 100 people, including 20 women in the National Capital.

Workers of the call centre used to contact citizens in the United States and cheat them by impersonating as employees of the Social Security Administration Department in the United States. The two call centres are suspected of defrauding multiple US citizens of crores of rupees, which were extorted as gift cards or cryptocurrency.

Fake call centres were operational from Kirti Nagar and Mangolpuri area of Delhi. From these two locations, police have recovered 82 desktops and servers, five laptops, and 84 cellphones. This is the Delhi Police’s second such operation in less than a fortnight against scam call centres that are defrauding US nationals. On June 24, 84 persons were detained for allegedly running an unlawful call centre and defrauding thousands of US citizens by acting as workers of a major e-commerce company and promising help with technical issues with the company’s services.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Alok Kumar said that his team had received information that an illegal call centre is being run from a building in Kirti Nagar. “We were told that the call centre staff defrauds US people by threatening to cancel their Social Security Number (SSN) while posing as an executive of a travel firm called The Global Airfares. On Tuesday night, at 8.30 p.m, our team raided the identified premises and discovered at least 30 people working illegally. They were also discovered to be impersonating as official of Social Security Administration Department of the United States and using VOIP calling technology to circumvent legal International Long Distance (ILD) Gateways and defraud US citizens under the guise of saving their Social Security Number (SSN) from suspension,” Kumar said.

He claimed that after threatening their targets in US, these callers told them that in order to prevent losing their Social Security numbers, they needed to buy gift cards and provide the information to the supervisor on the line in order for their suspended account to be reinstated. These gift coupons were then shared with a person in another country who converted them and wired them to the accused’s accounts as deposits, Kumar explained.

Crime branch teams first raided a fake call centre operating in a rented facility in west Delhi’s Kirti Nagar, where 25 tele-callers were calling. “We arrested 30 persons, including Amit Kumar and Chandrahas Patel, two team leaders, and Narendra Mishra, the manager. Amit Tyagi, the owner of the contact centre, was also arrested,” Kumar said.

According to the joint CP, Tyagi’s interrogation showed that he also managed a similar contact centre in Mangolpuri. Another squad raided the ‘TeleOne E-commerce Agency’ call centre and apprehended 67 people, including two kids.

“We asked Amit Tyagi to present the licence and other documentation required to operate the call centre, but he was unable to do so. “A case of impersonation, cheating, and criminal conspiracy has been filed, and an investigation is underway,” Kumar stated.