NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), under Operation Chakra V on Wednesday, arrested six “operatives” of a transnational cybercrime syndicate involved in targeting Japanese nationals. The arrests were made following joint raids at 19 locations in Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.
The operation led to the dismantling of two illegal call centres running a high-tech support scam.
The syndicate was allegedly duping foreign nationals—primarily Japanese citizens—by impersonating technical support staff from well-known multinational corporations, including Microsoft.
As per the CBI, a regular case was filed based on actionable intelligence inputs regarding a cyber network duping people on the pretext of fixing imaginary technical flaws. Victims were led to believe that their machines were hacked and then intimidated into depositing large amounts of money into mule bank accounts controlled by the syndicate.
The agency collaborated closely with the National Police Agency of Japan and Microsoft Corporation, whose cooperation was crucial for tracking the organisation and the modus operandi of the fraud gang. The partnership ended in coordinated search operations, which resulted in the arrests of the six accused persons identified as Ashu Singh, a resident of Delhi; Kapil Ghakhar, a resident of Panipat, Haryana; Rohit Maurya, a resident of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh; and Shubham Jaiswal, Vivek Raj, and Adarsh Kumar – all three are from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
Investigating officers confiscated large physical and digital evidence during the raids, indicating a scale and sophistication of the scam. Initial investigations show that the syndicate used sophisticated social engineering and technical deception to target vulnerable individuals.