Fake international call centre busted in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad police department busted a bogus international call centre in Petbasheerabad on Wednesday, posing as a reputable OTT platform’s tech support centre and duping customers in Australia and Canada. The gang's 13 members have been arrested, and incriminating evidence has been seized from them.

Rabesh Kumar Prasad, Sarbesh Kumar Gupta, a native of West Bengal, and Bairic Pramod Reddy, a native of Hanamkonda, are three of the arrested suspects who previously worked in call centres in London before recently moving back to India. The other 10 people detained are call centre employees. Pramod Reddy, the mastermind behind the racket, contacted his old colleagues in London, Rabesh Kumar Prasad and Sarbesh Kumar Gupta, and invited them to the city to start the bogus call centre.

Following a tip off from the Special Operations Team (SOT), DCP Medchal G. Sundeep stated that Medchal Zone police raided an office and apprehended the gang. Inquiries revealed that they pretended to be members of the tech support team and called the OTT platform's customers, claiming that their accounts had been hacked or had a security threat, and duped them under the guise of activating the accounts.

"They used illegal techniques and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls to contact the victims and forced them to pay amounts via gift cards that were redeemed using Australian bank accounts. The accused obtained these accounts through contacts in Australia," Sundeep stated.

The accused purchased data of OTT customers from West Bengal's absconding data vendors Ramakrishna Reddy and Akashand Wesley. They obtained customer data from Australia and Canada, but have so far only contacted Australian customers. Police suspect the data of foreign nationals was also stolen by data vendors. “They managed to dupe a few customers, who had transferred the amounts to the mule accounts procured by the accused, but the accounts were frozen by the respective banks due to suspicious transactions,” the police stated.