NEW DELHI:The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted searches at multiple locations in Delhi-NCR as part of a money laundering probe against operatives of some “fake” call centres which allegedly duped numerous foreigners to the tune of millions of US dollars, officials said.
At least 16 premises in Delhi, Noida and Gurugram apart from those in Mumbai were raided in the action carried out under the Prevention of Money
Laundering Act (PMLA).
The ED probe stems from multiple FIRs registered by Delhi Police against a person named Karan Verma and some others.
Investigation found that the fraudsters were running multiple “fake” call centres in Rohini, Paschim Vihar and Rajouri Garden areas of Delhi to dupe foreign nationals by impersonating as customer support of companies like Charles Schwab Financial Services, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
The accused also impersonated as police and other investigating agency officers and “extorted” money from the victims, threatening them with ‘digital arrest’, the officials said.
A modus operandi used by the accused was the deployment of BSOD (Blue Screen of Death or commonly known as Blue Screen errors). These fraudsters used deceptive pop-ups that look like a real Windows Blue Screen. The pop-up instructs the victim to call a phone number to “fix” the fake problem. The victim then falls into the trap of calling the “fake” tech support and ends up losing their hard-earned money, officials said.
The monetary assets of the victims were converted into cryptocurrencies, gift cards, etc. Crypto currency wallets used by the fraudsters have reported transactions to the tune of millions of US dollars.
The ED stumbled upon an additional “fake” call centre in Delhi during the searches that were continuing till late evening, they said.