The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) recently busted a call centre racket, allegedly run by six people in the rented premises of a resort at Igatpuri in Maharashtra’s Nashik. The CBI registered a cyber fraud case on August 8 against the six accused, all residents of Mumbai, as well as unknown people and bank officials.
The agency arrested five of the accused, identified as Vishal Yadav, Abhay Raj, Sameer, Shebaz and Durgesh. The accused allegedly entered into criminal conspiracy with each other and other unknown people, and committed financial fraud by impersonation and making phishing calls/deceptive calls, from an illegal call centre, posing as Amazon support services call centre.
As per the CBI, the accused have been cheating citizens of the US, Canada and other countries and fraudulently obtaining proceeds of crime via gift cards/cryptocurrency. The accused allegedly recruited around 60 operators comprising dialers, verifiers and closers for running the illegal call centre.
The investigation conducted by the CBI led to the recovery of 44 laptops, 71 mobile phones, and other incriminating digital evidence. Additionally, it recovered unaccounted cash amounting to 1.20 crore rupees, 500 grams of gold, and seven luxury cars valued at 1 crore rupees.
Transactions of approximately 5,000 USDT cryptocurrency ( 5 lakh rupees) and 2,000 Canadian dollar worth of gift vouchers (1.26 lakhs rupees) were detected.
During the searches, 62 employees working at the call centre were found to be operating live, and the process of cheating foreign nationals was in progress.
