Hyderabad: Sleuths of Cyberabad Cybercrime on Monday raided a fake call centre and arrested 17 persons who were found to be cheating foreigners using fake international VoIP.
The prime accused Mohammad Rafi Kavungal and co-accused Gandham, Veera Ram, Naresh and Kanithi Kalyan Chakravarthy along with seven others were operating the call centre.
The gang’s “firm” registered with a reputed e-commerce company and simultaneously ran multiple call centres from where bulk emails were sent to foreign nationals. The inbound calls were charged at `250 each wherein they convinced the foreign callers to purchase or renew licence for anti-virus software and made them pay for such service.
The accused used to forward phishing mails in the name of Anti-Virus company asking the victims to renew services. On receiving mails US nationals responded to the mail and contacted the number mentioned in mail, which were answered by co-accused who acted as telecallers at their centre in Kolkata.
On receiving calls from those interested in the US, the accused managed to convince them to provide service under paid service. Further the gift cards were redeemed through telegram channels and money from the bank accounts were transferred through Bitcoins.
Police registered a suo-motu case under section 419, 420, 468 r/w 34 IPC, 66 C & D IT Act. They seized 10 laptops, 20 mobiles, four routers, etc., from the accused and produced them in court.
