Fake call centre: Customers' data purchased for Rs 2 to Rs 10, five held

New delhi: Just think twice before giving your details to online shopping portals as your credentials might get shared with fraudsters. The Delhi Police on Monday said they have arrested five people who were involved in cheating by impersonating as executives of online shopping websites through a fake call centre. The investigators also claimed that they were purchasing customers' data for

Rs 2 to Rs 10.

Police identified the accused as Mani Kartik (32), N. Marimuttu (37), K. Rahul (18), C Shiva (28) and Prachi Arora (20). They were arrested from Keshav Puram area. They were running a fake call centre. The total transaction amount within one month is Rs 27 lakh.

As per the official, the accused used to fetch data from data providers whose contact numbers are available on Just Dial. They would called any data provider and ask them to provide data of the customers who recently made a purchase through online shopping portals.

"Data is easily available from data providers for Rs 2 to Rs 10 per mobile number. After that, the accused persons would call the victims impersonating themselves as executives of online shopping portals and then use details of the victims from the data to earn victim's trust, "the official said.

As per official, when the victim got comfortable with the conversation, they induced victims with their lucrative schemes. For instance, the accused would lure the victims by saying that based on their last shopping, they were selected as lucky customers.

"When the victim gets influenced with the freebies offered by the accused, the accused persons asked victims to deposit processing fee to deliver the gift items or they also use to give the option to collect cash against their gift item on paying certain processing fee as per the value of the gift items," the official said. They provide bank account numbers of fake identity to get the money transferred from the victims.

Police said, "Once the accused get money from victims, they don't pick up calls of the victims. After using one mobile number and bank account number for 15 days maximum, they used to dispose the same and get a new one using fake identity."