The Belagavi police on Tuesday busted a fake call centre operating in the city, which targeted US citizens for cyber fraud, and arrested 33 individuals employed at the centre. Thirty-seven laptops, 37 mobile phones and other devices used to store data were also seized.
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The arrested employees hail from various states, including Gujarat (4), Rajasthan (2), Maharashtra (7), Jharkhand (4) as well as Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and West Bengal. Some of the accused have been identified as Pritesh Naveen Chandra Patel, Meeta Rajubhai Gupta, Karan Bahadur Rajput, and Harikishan Vishnu Prasad Upadhyaya – all hailing from Gujarat; and Delhi-based Ashutosh Vijay Kumar.
The incident comes after 16 people were arrested last month from a similar facility in Bengaluru run by a Rajasthan-based engineer. Both fake BPO centres were busted after the Karnataka Police alerted the local cybercrime units.
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Employed school dropouts
On Tuesday, the Belagavi City Cyber Crime police station registered a case after receiving information about the operation of a fake call centre at Kumar Hall in Ajjam Nagar Circle. A team of officers searched the premises. “There were around 20 to 30 people from different parts of India who were calling people in the guise of police officers and bank officials, and scaring them. The centre employed school dropouts to extort money from victims,” the First Information Report (FIR) said.
“We are considering it as an organised crime. We have seized a database of US citizens targeted from a computer found at the location. We will be making efforts to get statements from the victims to prosecute the case with the help of Interpol,” said Borase Bhushan Gulabrao, Police Commissioner, Belagavi.
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The commissioner said the calls and communications to US citizens were made through Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) applications and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to mask the numbers and locations from which the calls originated.
The centre, which began operations in March, employed people for salaries between Rs 12,000 and Rs 40,000, the police added.
Arrests in Bengaluru case
On October 7, the Bengaluru police busted a similar fake call centre, Cybits Solutions Pvt Ltd, operating out of the city’s Southeast region. In addition to the charges of fraud and misuse of information technology, the accused in this case have been booked under the stronger section 111 (organised crime) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) because similar cases filed earlier failed to pass the muster before courts in the absence of statements from the victims.
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The firm allegedly employed 20-25 young boys and girls who were trained to cheat unknown victims by claiming to be law enforcement agents. The directors of the firm – Mahipal Singh, an engineering graduate from Rajasthan, and Vikram Singh, who was arrested recently – have claimed that they were “not involved in the day-to-day administration of the company.”
The fake call centre targeting US and Canadian nationals with threats of digital arrests was allegedly established in 2021 by Mahipal, investigations have found. “The company managers had lured job seekers from various states by promising free accommodation and work opportunities in Bengaluru. They arranged houses in HSR Layout and BTM Layout, as well as cab and food facilities,” the police said