The Delhi police have arrested 21 people after busting an illegal international call centre in west Delhi’s Naraina. The accused used to allegedly dupe U.K.-based citizens by posing as revenue and custom officials of that country, the police said on Sunday.
The employees at the call centre in Naraina Industrial Area approached U.K.-based citizens through phone service over the Internet (VoIP) and posed as HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, United Kingdom) officials. They then duped them claiming that discrepancies were found in the audit of their income tax.
The police said the call centre was raided on June 3 after information was received by Naraina SHO Sameer Srivastva, following which a team was constituted and 21 employees at the centre, including a floor manager, two supervisors and 14 agents were nabbed.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Urvija Goel said, “During interrogation, it was revealed that these fraudsters were using illegal techniques, VOIP calling, by-passing the legal International Long Distance (ILD) gateways and thus, causing loss to government exchequer.”
On pretext of I-T frauds
“They used costly softwares and cheated U.K.-based citizens on the pretext of I-T frauds and violations of government regulations by posing as HMRC officials of the U.K.”
These fraudsters are suspected to have links abroad who helped them by providing data of international citizens and also assisted them with international payment gateways, she said.
“Investigation of the case is in progress. Data of recovered mobile phones of the accused and banking transactions of the accused’s accounts are being analysed to connect the people involved in the nexus,” Ms. Goel said.
The police have recovered 34 computers along with accessories, optical fibre routers, LAN servers, Wi-Fi routers, Wi-Fi-switches, mobile phones, incriminating evidence of foreign payment gateways, fraud bank accounts and data of lakhs of U.K. taxpayers.
