Noida police bust call centre involved in duping foreigners, 11 arrested

Noida police on Thursday busted a call centre that allegedly duped foreign nationals after by hacking their laptops, officials said on Thursday, adding that 11 accused were arrested. Police said that the call centre was operating from a flat in a Sector 117 highrise.

“On Thursday morning we received a tip about the illegal call centre. We raided the flat and found men and women chatting over calls, wearing headphones, and using mobiles,” said Ram Badan Singh, deputy commissioner of police, Noida, adding that the accused tried to flee but were caught.

“The accused revealed that they were running the call centre for 20 days to dupe foreigners after hacking their laptops,” he added.

Explaining their modus operandi, the DCP said, “The accused would initially send a pop-up message to the laptop of a foreign citizen. When their target clicked on the pop-up, the mobile phone number of a customer support popped up on their laptop screen, blocking the entire system. When they dialled the mentioned mobile number, the call went to the call centre where the accused threatened the victims saying that they were exposed to cyber fraud because their laptop was hacked.”

“Later, accused would call them posing as bank officials and dupe them after getting their financial details,” said DCP Singh.

A case under sections 318(4) (cheating), 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), 317(5) (stolen property), and 3(5) (criminal act done by several people) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and IT Act was registered against 11 people at the Sector 113 police station on Thursday, said police.

The accused have been identified as Nitesh Singh, 28, of Varanasi, Andreau, 24, of Ri Bhoi in Meghalaya, Louis, 28, and Sangeeta, both of Assam, Akash Singh, 27, of New Delhi, Hritik Kumar, 25, of Gurugram, Vivek Mittal, 29, of Hisar in Haryana, Rahul Pashwan, 26, of Ludhiana, Tiyanaro, 31, of Nagaland, Yunis, 20, of Guwahati, and Simran, 22, of Nagaon, Assam, said police.

Police are investigating how many people were duped by the accused. Nineteen laptops, 20 mobiles, 5 SIM cards, and other electronic gadgets were recovered from their possession.