Fake call centres busted by Cyber Cell of North East Delhi Police

Luring gullible people in the name of facilitating easy loans, accessing their email-ids and hacking them to misuse their credit cards are some of the illegal operations that a group of people were carrying through an unauthorized call centre in Uttam Nagar.

A sophisticated and tech-savvy investigation by a team of Cyber Cell of North East Delhi Police has brought the culprits to the book.

“On January 12, a complaint was received from Rihan Khan, resident of Kabir Nagar, Delhi wherein he stated that he had been cheated for Rs. 1,85,108 through his credit card without his knowledge. Accordingly, on the basis of the complaint an FIR was lodged in Cyber Police Station/North East District and an investigation was taken up,” Sanjay Kumar Sain, DCP, North-East District, said.

During the course of the enquiry, it was established that his e-mail address had been procured through applications like truecaller and hacked by someone. The cheated amount was transferred into various accounts through “No Broker gateway”, Google Account and Gmail.

IP address history of the complainant was requested from Google and analyzed thoroughly. While analyzing, one IP address used in cheating through technical manoeuvering was detected. The registrant of this IP address was found in the name of a lady of Nihal Vihar, Delhi. It was being used by Tanzim Raja, a resident of Udyog Nagar in Delhi.

“On the basis of technical surveillance and local intelligence, police team zeroed in on a location in Uttam Nagar. On January 20, a raid was conducted and some people were apprehended from an unauthorised call centre in Uttam Nagar and one mobile phone was recovered from each of them. On examination, they disclosed that two unauthorized/illegal call centres are being operated from the same premises,” Sain said.

One call centre was being run and supervised by a person namely Arif along with his wife and another by Prevez and his lady associate under the overall ownership of Sandeep Kumar, who was not found there.

14 Telecaller girls, engaged in calling the customers in the name of credit card and loans with the intent to cheat them were also found in the call centre. They were examined and bound down with the notice u/s 41 Cr.PC to join the investigation.

On their instance, the manager of the call centre, a lady was also apprehended and a cash amount of Rs. 1,24,700, one HP laptop and 30 mobiles phones of different make (keypad as well as Android) along with 12 credit/debit cards of the different banks were recovered from her possession.

On sustained interrogation of all the three persons, they confessed to their crime and disclosed that they randomly contact the people for providing credit cards and loans, at cheap rates and demand a petty amount for that.

“Later, they convince their customers about sanctioning of loan amount and demand money in lieu of insuring the said loan amount. The amount received for insuring the loan was being transferred in various bogus accounts of different banks however no loan amount was being provided to anyone,” Sain said.

They also used to extract details of people’s email id from the public Apps like True caller and cheat them through their credit cards by obtaining the OTP on their hacked email ids.

Sain added, “Sincere efforts are being made to arrest the absconding persons Sandeep, Parvez and his lady associate.”