The Ludhiana Commissionerate Police on Thursday busted a fake call centre, which was being operated from Chandan Towers at Pakhowal Road and nabbed 27 persons in this regard.
Commissioner of Police Ludhiana Rakesh Agrawal said that accused persons had been duping UK based residents by impersonating as government officials of these countries and threatening them to impose some penalty on them if they do not settle the matter.
He said that the call centre was being operated by Lakhan Abrol, Yatin, Cain Masih and Titus in the Tower owned by Somal Sood, all of whom have been arrested along with 22 others including four African Nationals, who were employees at the call centre.
The Police have also recovered Rs 14.5 lakhs of hawala money, 22 desktop computers, nine laptops, and 31 mobiles along with huge amount of accessories including LAN servers, Wi-fi routers and Wi-fi switches.
CP Rakesh Agrawal said that investigation into their modus operandi revealed that employees at the call centre approach UK or USA-based citizens through an internet-based calling application (VoIP) known as VICI Dial App phone service and at times pose as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, United Kingdom (HMRC) officials.
The CP said that these fraud callers induce fear in victims by telling them that their identity has been used to carry out tax/insurance frauds in their country and a criminal case would be filed against them. When the victims asked them for a remedy, they were told to transfer some amount to a UK based account by providing the account number of their gang members based in the UK.
He said that the accused had purchased the data of customers through the internet and other sources on a payment basis. The accused also provided a script to the callers to trap the innocent citizens. The script has all the possible questions which can be asked by the citizens and their answers. Another team of this network targets US nationals by posing as Amazon employees, he added.
The CP said that half of the transferred amount was being kept by the UK/USA facilitators, while the remaining was received by the accused through hawala transactions.
CP Rakesh Agrawal said that they have also found incriminating evidence of foreign payment gateways, fraud bank accounts, and data of lakhs of UK income taxpayers. He said that further investigations are on to ascertain the total amount of the fraud done by the accused. He also does not rule out the involvement of more individuals in this scam.
The modus operandi of the accused is very innovative as shown in the steps below :
1. Fraudsters given illegal access to the database of the people. Generally they by such a database at the price of Rs.1 per person. The said data has Name, Mobile Number and sometimes other identification details of the people.
2.They call these people through software-based pre-recorded calls and ask people to press a button on their mobile if they want to speak to the Executive representative of the department.
3. When people press the button then call is transferred to the gang members who tell the unsuspecting public that they are from the Tax Department of UK and there are some Tax liability pending against them as some one has made a transection using their income
4. By putting fear in the minds of public the gang convince the victim to get rid of this problem. Only about 2-3% people called up respond to settle the matter.
5. If the public is convinced and agrees to sort out the matter then the gang member who had called, transfers the call to his senior who is called closer/handler.
6. The closer/handler then guides the public to transfer their amount in some other bank account temporarily for 2-3 days and by doing this they can skip the Tax penalty. The handler give their facilitators' bank account to the public which is usually located the same country.
7. When money is received in that account about 50% is kept by foreign facilitators and the rest is transferred to India through the Hawala route.
Meanwhile, FIR no 277 dated June 30, 2021, has been registered under sections 389, 467, 468, 471, 420, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 66C, 66D, and 75 of the IT Act at Police Station Division-5 Ludhiana.