Cyber Crime
Delhi Police Bust 2 Call Centres In Uttam Nagar, 34 Arrested For Duping Foreigners Of Over Rs 10 Cr
NEW DELHI: Despite the regular crackdown, the illegal business of call centres duping foreign nationals is mushrooming in Delhi NCR. Delhi Police cyber crime unit on Saturday arrested 34 people for allegedly duping foreigners through two fake call centres they were operating out of a building in Uttam Nagar, southwest Delhi.
They were defrauding foreign nationals under the guise of being from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Apple technical support, and McAfee antivirus support.
According to the police a raid was conducted and it was found that the accused were running two illegal call centres from the third and fourth floor of the building in Milap Nagar, Uttam Nagar.
Two separate cases were registered against the two scam centres and a total of 34 persons were arrested, out of which 18 were working on the third and 16 on the fourth floor.
The owners of both centres have been arrested from the spot. The third floor centre was being run by Kshitiz Bali (32), while the other one was being run by Dhananjay Negi (28) and Abhishek (29).
Deputy commissioner of police (CyPAD) Anyesh Roy said at the time of the raid, there was an ongoing call at one of the centres in which the unsuspecting victim was being threatened and extorted by the accused persons of USD 2,000 ( Rs 1.44 lakh) by impersonating the US Drug Enforcement Agency. The police team managed to take over the call at the right time, before the offence could be completed and made the victim, an elderly female, aware of the scam and further cautioned her not to fall prey to such tricks in the future.
MODUS-OPERANDI
During the investigation police found that Kshitiz Bali, is a graduate and has been operating a fake call centre for the last four years by shifting locations in the NCR region. The victims of the scam are people residing in English speaking countries. He had created multiple teams at his centre and each team was handling a designated ‘process’. These processes included
Social Security Number Scam: The accused contact foreign nationals by impersonating various law enforcement agencies and other government agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US Marshals Service, etc. and tell them that their bank accounts and other assets are being frozen as their details have been found at a crime scene and there are bank accounts running in their names using which illegal transactions have been made to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia.
They also threaten the victims with immediate arrest. Once the victim becomes apprehensive, they give them two options. One is to go for a legal action in which first the victim would be arrested and their assets would be seized and only later on could the victim fight it out in the court.
The second option is to go for an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) which would be faster and simpler. When the victim chooses to go for ADR, they ask them to share all the details of their assets, including bank accounts and the amount of money in those accounts.
In the next step, the victim is told that there is only one way to safeguard their assets; they would have to either buy Bitcoins or Google Gift Cards worth all the money in their accounts. If the victim agrees to buy Bitcoins, the accused induce them to convert all the money in their accounts into Bitcoins and transfer the same to the wallets operated by the accused persons, saying that it is a safe government wallet. If the victim agrees to buy Gift Cards, they induce them to share the number of the cards stating that it will be linked to their new bank accounts and thus, be safe.
Apple Technical Support Scam: The accused send recorded messages to people in US and Canada impersonating Apple Technical Support team and inducing them to call on the mentioned number for any kind of technical support related to Apple products.
When an unsuspecting customer calls on the number, they pretend to be from Apple Technical Support team and take remote access of the devices of the callers. Subsequently, they start scaring them by telling them that their devices have been infected by viruses and are compromised. Finally, in the name of cleaning up the devices of the callers, they induce them to make payments of up to thousands of US Dollars through Google Gift Cards or iTunes cards.
McAfee Antivirus Technical Support Scam: The accused send pop-ups to the computers of such unsuspecting people that their system has been compromised and they should call at the given number for technical assistance by McAfee. When the victim calls, the accused pretend to be from McAfee technical assistance team and make her/him give remote access of their computer to them. After that, they tell the victim that several malicious programs including malwares, spywares, etc. have been found in their system when in reality, there is no such issue.
They further “caution” the victim that their banking credentials might be compromised if immediate remedial steps are not taken. The victim, fearing for her/his financial security, agrees to pay the amount as asked for, by the accused. The payment is made through Google Gift Cards or iTunes Cards. Upon receiving the payment, the accused pretend to clean up the malwares, etc. from the victims’ system and also make them sign up for a susbscription. All this while, the victim is under the impression that he is getting legitimate technical support from McAfeeInc.
The other two main accused persons, Abhishek and Dhananjay Negi, are also both graduates and have been running this scam for almost one year now. They had also divided the entire strength into teams but they were focused on mainly duping and extorting people in the name of Apple Technical Support, as mentioned above.
ECONOMICS OF THE SCAM
These scam centres used to train their callers to focus on volume. They were trained to take 50-60 calls per person per day. As disclosed by the accused, the conversion rate of the calls was around 5 percent and the average amount of ‘sale’ was around USD 100 per converted call. The daily ‘sale’ at both these centres would be around USD 3,000 each ( Rs 2.50 lakh) .
The centre being run on the third Floor by Kshitiz Bali, was initially focused exclusively on tech support scam. But gradually, the generated calls started reducing as people would recognize the scam. It was then, that he decided to ‘diversify’ and included multiple processes by designation a specialized team for each.
The callers were recruited on the basis of their ability to converse fluently in English and preferably with a foreign accent. Most of them are either school dropouts or simple graduates.
The pay structure for both the centres were almost identical. On average, each caller (first level of the scam) was paid Rs. 20-25 thousand per month as salary while the Team Leaders and closers ( second level) were paid Rs. 45-50 thousand per month. The salary of the manager was Rs. 75 thousand per month. In addition to this, all employees were paid incentives.
For every USD that they managed to scam, the caller got Rs 2 and the Team Leader/closer got Rs.4 as an incentive. Moreover, if/when any caller managed to scam a victim of more than 30-35 thousand USD, she/he would get expensive gifts like iPhones, etc. in addition to the regular incentive.
Team involved in the crackdown includes Inspector Arun Verma, Inspector Hansraj, Sub- Inspector Pawan, Sub- Inspector Sunil, Sub- Inspector Ajit, and others.
