New Delhi: The Delhi Police Cyber Cell has arrested 34 people during raids at two fake call centres, operating from the same building in Uttam Nagar, for duping foreign nationals, police said on Saturday.
The crackdown on the fake call centres was launched Friday.
Police said that the foreign citizens, especially Canadians and Americans, were duped on the pretext of providing them social security number, Apple tech support and McAfee antivirus support.
“The accused used to send voice recordings to the foreign nationals, impersonating as US Drug Enforcement Agency officials and then extort money from them. They used to send pop-ups to the foreigners that their devices have been hacked and then cheat them on the pretext of providing them technical support.
“They also used to send recorded messages pretending to be from Apple Technical Support and then cheat unsuspecting callers. Both the mastermind and owners of the building — Kshitiz Bali, Abhishek and Dhananjay Negi respectively, have also been arrested,” said Anyesh Roy, DCP Cyber Crime.
“The accused used to send recorded messages to people in US and Canada impersonating as 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 callers devices. Subsequently, the calls were made to scare the recipients that their devices have been infected by viruses and are compromised. Finally, in the name of cleaning up their devices, they induce them to make payments amounting up to thousands of US Dollars through Google Gift Cards or iTunes cards.”
Most of the accused were either school dropouts or simple graduates.
“On an average, each caller (first level of the scam) was paid Rs 20,000 – 25,000 per month as salary while the team leaders and closers (second level) were paid between Rs 45,000 and 50,000. The salary of the manager was Rs 75,000 per month,” the officer added.
