54 arrested for duping 4,500 foreign nationals of Rs 100 crore

New delhi: The Delhi Police on Wednesday said they have arrested 54 people who duped 4,500 foreign nationals of Rs 100 crore. Police said that the accused impersonated law enforcement officials to cheat and extort money from unsuspecting people.

Police said that all the accused were arrested from a fake call centre in Moti Nagar area. All 89 desktops and the server set up were found at the spot where 54 people (45 male and nine female) were arrested, including four team leaders and closers.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Anyesh Roy said the accused contacted foreign nationals based in the US and other countries impersonating officials of various law enforcement agencies and other government agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the US Marshals Service.

Their bank accounts and other assets are being frozen as their details have been found at a crime scene and there are bank accounts running in their names using which illegal transactions have been made to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia. They also threaten the victims with immediate arrest."Once the victim becomes apprehensive, they give them two options. One is to go for a legal action in which first the victim would be arrested and their assets would be seized and only later on could the victim fight it out in the court," he said.

As per the official, the second option is to go for an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) which would be faster and simpler. When the victim chooses to go for ADR, they ask them to share all the details of their assets, including bank accounts and the amount of money in those accounts.

In the next step, the victim is told that there is only one way to safeguard their assets — they would have to either buy Bitcoins or Google gift cards worth all the money in their accounts. If the victim agrees to buy Bitcoins, the accused induces them to convert all the money in their accounts into Bitcoins and transfer the same to the wallets operated by the accused persons, saying that it is a safe government wallet.

"If the victim agrees to buy gift cards, they induce them to share the number of the cards stating that it will be linked to their new bank accounts and thus, be safe," police said.

The arrests were made by a team under ACP (CyPAD) Aditya Gautam, consisting of inspectors Manoj and Praveen. The initial investigation has revealed that the owner of this call centre is managing the operations from Dubai, UAE.