The Ludhiana Commissionerate Police on Thursday busted afake call centre, which was being operated from Chandan Towers at Pakhowal Roadand nabbed 27 persons in this regard.
Commissioner of Police Ludhiana Rakesh Agrawal said thataccused persons had been duping UK based residents by impersonating asgovernment officials of these countries and threatening them to impose somepenalty on them if they do not settle the matter.
He said that the call centre was being operated by LakhanAbrol, Yatin, Cain Masih and Titus in the Tower owned by Somal Sood, all ofwhom 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 hawalamoney, 22 desktop computers, nine laptops, and 31 mobiles along with huge amountof accessories including LAN servers, Wi-fi routers and Wi-fi switches.
CP Rakesh Agrawal said that investigation into theirmodus operandi revealed that employees at the call centre approach UK orUSA-based citizens through an internet-based calling application (VoIP) knownas VICI Dial App phone service and at times pose as Her Majesty’s Revenue andCustoms, United Kingdom (HMRC) officials.
The CP said that these fraud callers induce fear invictims by telling them that their identity has been used to carry outtax/insurance frauds in their country and a criminal case would be filedagainst them. When the victims asked them for a remedy, they were told totransfer some amount to a UK based account by providing the account number oftheir gang members based in the UK.
He said that the accused had purchased the data ofcustomers through the internet and other sources on a payment basis. The accusedalso provided a script to the callers to trap the innocent citizens. The scripthas all the possible questions which can be asked by the citizens and theiranswers. Another team of this networktargets US nationals by posing as Amazon employees, he added.
The CP said that half of the transferred amount was beingkept by the UK/USA facilitators, while the remaining was received by theaccused through hawala transactions.
CP Rakesh Agrawal said that they have also foundincriminating evidence of foreign payment gateways, fraud bank accounts, anddata of lakhs of UK income taxpayers. Hesaid that further investigations are on to ascertain the total amount of thefraud done by the accused. He also does not rule out the involvement of moreindividuals in this scam.
The modus operandi of the accused is very innovative as shownin the steps below :
1. Fraudsters given illegal access to the database of thepeople. 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-basedpre-recorded calls and ask people topress a button on their mobile if they want to speak to the Executiverepresentative of the department.
3. When people press the button then call is transferredto the gang members who tell the unsuspecting public that they are from the TaxDepartment of UK and there are some Tax liability pending against them as someone has made a transection using their income
4. By putting fear in the minds of public the gangconvince the victim to get rid of this problem. Only about 2-3% people calledup respond to settle the matter.
5. If the public is convinced and agrees to sort out thematter 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 transfertheir amount in some other bank account temporarily for 2-3 days and by doingthis they can skip the Tax penalty. The handler give their facilitators' bankaccount to the public which is usually located the same country.
7. When money is received in that account about 50% iskept by foreign facilitators and the rest is transferred to India through the Hawalaroute.
Meanwhile, FIR no 277 dated June 30, 2021, has beenregistered under sections 389, 467, 468, 471, 420, and 120B of the Indian PenalCode (IPC) and sections 66C, 66D, and 75 of the IT Act at Police StationDivision-5 Ludhiana.