By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 8 Aug: Dehradun Police have arrested 8 accused who were allegedly cheating people by running illegal call centres. All the members of the gang are residents of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat and Bihar. They were arrested from IT Park area from where they were operating the illegal call centre.
The Police raid and operation was conducted after SSP Ajai Singh received confidential information about an illegal international call centre being operated on the ground floor of Cyanotech Building located near Rajpur’s IT Park. It was reported the call centre was cheating foreigners by making calls to them and claiming their computers had been hacked.
Ajai Singh constituted 2 separate police teams under the leadership of SP City and Circle Officer, Mussoorie, and directed them to take necessary action. When the teams raided the illegal call centre operating by the name of Global Tech Energy Solutions last night, a call centre with about 100 cabins was seen being operated in a large hall, where calls were being attended through the system by young men and women, who were obtaining information about the foreigners’ bank accounts on the promise of restoring their computers from hackers. They usually introduced themselves as representatives of the International Anti Hacking Department.
The police detained 8 people who were running the said call centre. Their names were Mihir Ashwin Bhai Patel, Lalit alias Rodi, Amir Suhail, Manoj Mirpuri, Ankit Singh Kaushik Jana, Shivam Dubey and Goswami Het Bharti. During interrogation, the main accused Mihir Ashwani Bhai and Lalit alias Rodi admitted that they are running the said fake call centre through which they target citizens of USA and Canada. They call up the victims and introduce themselves as officers of International Anti Hacking Agency and inform them that their computers have been hacked by someone who had full access to their computers and that they can fix them at a certain cost. To get access to the computers of the victims, they send pop up messages which when clicked by the victims grant full access to the victims’ systems and then they get access to the banking details of the victims.
The pop-up messages are sent by another team, which is in the USA and that team itself keeps track of the monetary transactions while running the pop-up campaign and by fraudulently transacting money. The money obtained is sent to them through hawala. Customers contact these teams from the numbers mentioned in the pop-up messages sent by the US team. Applications like QUICK ASSIST, LOGMEIN, GO SHARE, TINY URL and softwares like EYEBEAM, ASIA ONE are used to receive calls. Also, online apps like 2 LINE, TALK TONE are used to make outbound calls. On checking the laptops and desktops installed in the cabins by the police team on the spot, the use of EYEBENM app was found on their screens and foreign numbers were found in missed/dial calls. Also, details related to money transfer through different applications were obtained on some laptops. The police team has sealed all the equipment on the spot and arrested all the eight accused running the call centre.
The main accused Mihir Ashwani Bhai Patel is from Ahmedabad, but currently residing at Pacific Golf Estate, Dehradun, while Lalit alias Rodi is also a resident of Ahmedabad. Aamir Sohail is a resident of Kolkata while Manoj Mirpuri is a resident of Pune. Ankit Singh is a resident of Bihar and Kaushik Jana is also a West Bengal resident. Shivam Dave is from Ahmedabad, while Goswami Het Bharti is a resident of Bhavnagar in Gujarat.
In all, 81 Laptops, 42 Mobile phones, 106 Laptop chargers, 126 Mouse, 29 Desktop computers, 100 headphones, 32 Keyboards, 26 CPUs, 5 WiFi Routers and a Mahindra Thar vehicle were recovered from their possession.
The police team that uncovered the incident will be rewarded a cash prize of Rs 25000 by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Dehradun.
