Gang running fake call centre to dupe people busted, 2 held

Faridabad: Two members of a gang were arrested here for allegedly running a fake call centre and duping over 1,700 people across the country on the pretext of giving them ‘work from home’ opportunities, police said on Thursday.

Rs 64,000 cash, 14 mobile phones and 13 SIM cards were recovered from the possession of Prabhat and Om Prakash, they said.

Prabhat, the mastermind behind the scam, was operating a fake call centre in Rohini, Delhi, and luring people on the pretext of providing them work-from-home opportunities.

The action followed a complaint filed by a Faridabad-based woman, who approached the police after being duped of over Rs 1.20 lakh. An FIR was registered based on this and a team led by Inspector Basant Chauhan, head of the Cyber Crime police station, NIT, finally busted the duo, police officials said.

”They used to put advertisements on Facebook, offering work-from-home opportunities. When anybody contacted them after seeing the advertisements, they would tempt the person by offering opportunities to earn thousands of rupees every month sitting at home. Soon after, they would extort money from the victims in the name of registration fee, ECS charge, GST, courier charge, insurance etc,” Sube Singh, spokesperson of Faridabad police, said.

The investigation revealed that the accused have carried out 1,784 such cyber fraud incidents across the country, including 59 in Haryana.

”The accused were produced in a city court and sent to jail. A search is on for others involved with the gang,” Singh added.