2 illegal call centres busted, 34 arrested

In two different operations, the Delhi Police busted two illegal call centres and nabbed 34 persons who were involved in cheating innocent people on the pretext of various schemes and providing loans through a Chinese app, the police informed on Wednesday. In the first operation, the

cops arrested four people who impersonated as Microsoft employees. They were identified as Ankit Mishra aka Rishabh (26), a resident of UP’s Ayodhya, Sadab Sheikh (25) a resident of Kanpur, while Pramod Kumar (25) and Shobhit Chand (24) are residents of East Delhi’s

Trilokpuri area. Amurtha Guguloth, DCP East Delhi said that they cheated several victims (mostly US citizens) on the pretext of various schemes of Microsoft such as subscriptions for printer drivers, antivirus, and updation

programs of MS Word, Excel and Windows on computers or laptops. For providing these services on behalf of Microsoft, they charged the victims $100 or $200 from them. The call centre was running in the Pandav Nagar area of East Delhi.

They used to get the payment in a PayPal account. Most of these accounts were purchased from PayPal account holders on commission.

PayPal account holders used to further transfer the money in the accounts of apprehended persons after keeping their commission.

All 4 of them were working in partnership. Initial investigation has revealed that for the last 6 months, they are running this call centre and since then they have earned around Rs 12-13 lakh, Guguloth

confirmed.On the other hand, the city police have apprehended 30 persons, however, three are the main culprits and the other 27 are telecallers, the cops revealed. “Secret information was received that an illegal Call Centre is running at Madhu Vihar for extorting money from innocent loan seekers through banned Chinese loan applications by sending messages to them and their contacts derogatory remarks and morphed nude photographs,” DCP East said. In the recent case, the accused persons have been identified as Anil Madaan (43), Sandeep Verma (39), and Vishal Kumar (23). Anil is a resident of East Delhi’s Geeta Colony while the other two are residents of West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar.