A businessman and his accomplice from Tamil Nadu were apprehended by the Hyderabad Commissioner’s Task Force, North Zone team for running a fake call centre.
The accused, Gopikrishna Venkatakrishna Vasu (32) from Nesapakkam and Natarajan Arumugam (36) from Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, cheated several people on the pretext of providing family discount health insurance policy card with low annual premium, as well as higher returns in short period on smart money investment plans. They were residents of Trimulgherry here.
Vasu is a known white collar offender in Chennai and was previously arrested by the police there, who also invoked PD Act against him, Officer on Special Duty (Task Force) P Radha Kishan Rao said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Acting on a tip-off, the north zone team led by K Nageswar Rao raided a house at Tirumalgherry and busted the fake call centre. “They cheated 55 persons and duped them of approximately ₹ 5.50 lakh,” Mr. Radha Kishan Rao said.
The team seized three fake certificates, an iPad, computers, and other incriminating material from the house.
According to the OSD, the duo established the fake call centre ‘United India Health Organization’ (UIHO), and engaged female telecallers, to trap innocent customers and cheat them for ₹ 5,000 to ₹10,000 on the pretext of providing family discount health insurance policy.
ADVERTISEMENT
They also used to get bulk SIM cards of various networks to make calls with customers and obtained customers’ phone numbers from a private data providing agency and used to make calls.