Hyderabad: Ex-call centre employs execs in racket

Hyderabad: An Investigation official says that the Indian loan and prize money scamsters have honed their skills by working in call centers. Of the nearly 30 persons arrested for the scams by the city’s Central Crime Station police, most had worked for many years in call centres.

“During their job in call centres, their main task was to call up customers and prompt them to take insurance policies, loans and other services. They were trained to persuade customers They used the same abilities to convince the victims,” said Cyber Crime inspector P. Ravi Kiran, who had interrogated suspects multiple times.

The scamsters are well aware of the weakness of their targets. In the loan scam, they call up defaulters who are searching frantically for funds. They access the loan applications and contacts from financial firms including banks.

After the Hyderabad police made a series of arrests from Delhi and Noida, it came to light that these scamsters had cheated many others in different parts of the country. One gang had cheated over 500 victims from various states.

After the Hyderabad police arrested the major gangs, the police from other cities followed up. The Delhi police, under whose nose the gangs thrived, had to get a tip off from the Hyderabad police to act.

The Delhi police had taken transit warrants to secure custody of two major scamsters after the Hyderabad police arrested them from their hideouts in the national capital, sources from the CCS said.

“Though these crooks had defrauded many from northern states, none of the police forces had detected the cases till we did,” a cyber crime police station official claimed.