Chennai cops bust vishing' call centre in Karnal

Chennai: Seven persons, who were part of a racket of running a ‘call centre’ in Karnal in Haryana near Delhi, to defraud credit card and debit card customers of Tamil Nadu, were arrested by Chennai police.   

Police had received over 400 complaints via banks and customers who found their money siphoned off by these callers after collecting their bank card details over phone by posing as executives from various banks.

City crime branch team Chennai police on Sunday said that after busting the racket on Friday in Karnal, the arrested seven were brought to Chennai on Sunday.

The cheats were posing as managers or customer care executives of banks and making ‘vishing’ calls to cardholders in Chennai.

Banks and police estimates that gang members could have siphoned off crores of rupees by doing online shopping and transferring funds from customers’ account to their account.

“Though all of them were from Haryana, at least three of them could talk in Tamil and extract details from the victims. Sitting in their call centre in Karnal, all of them were using only mobile phones to contact their victims in Tamil Nadu,” noted S. Jayakumar, deputy commissioner of police, CCB, who supervised the investigation.

The gang was using the cover of a Vodafone distributor to collect details of bank customers but misused the information to defraud customers through ‘vishing’ calls.

The arrested were identified as Nithin Singala, 26, Vihas, 27, Riyazath Khan, 36, Gulshan Kumar, 24, Jithindar, 30, Shyman Ram, 24 and Krishnan Chawla, 55. All the arrested hailed from Karnal.

Police are on the lookout for one Vipin Chopra, who had collected customers’ details from bank and handed over to the gang.