india

Updated: Sep 29, 2019 09:24 IST

The investigation into bogus call centres by police in Jaipur has revealed that the accused purchased a database of around five lakh foreign nationals from websites and allegedly targeted elderly people.

Jaipur Police had busted a fake call centre racket on Thursday and arrested 25 people from two gangs involved in duping people in the US, China and other countries of crores of rupees.

The call centres were being run in Indraprastha Colony and Jawahar Circle of Rajasthan’s capital. In one of the raids near Jawahar Circle, 20 people were arrested — most of them were from Gujarat.

Police seized several computers, laptops, mobile phones, modem, diallers, and Rs 19.25 lakh in cash apart from other networking equipment.

“On the input of state special branch, the city police was keeping an eye on the call centre from the last few months. When a team went for an inspection and questioned Vaibhav Pareek, the kingpin of the racket, police came to know that they didn’t have any licence to run the call centre,” said a senior police official.

“During the investigation, we also found that the accused had purchase data of nationals of China, America, Hong Kong and other countries from websites,” the officials added.

He added that the money extorted from the foreigners came through a “hawala network” from abroad with the help of middlemen settled in those countries.

Interestingly, other than the kingpin, other accused were school dropouts but could speak multiple foreign languages to deal with their targets.

Every caller from each centre made at least 70 to 80 calls every day, of which 10-15 calls would materialise and of these three to four people would make payment after being threatened or offered an improvement of their credit ratings.

“They would speak in a foreign accent and would dupe them by offering a loan on low interest over phone calls. The gang members also cheated people in the foreign counties posing as tax officials. Generally, they targeted people with low credit ratings,” said Santosh Chalke, additional commissioner of police.

“To manage multiple calls simultaneously, the call centre used software called ’Eye Beam’, which diverts calls to separate ports (receivers) like an exchange,” he added.

Jaipur Police had busted four bogus call centres and arrested 40 people from various areas on March 28. The gang members allegedly cheated people in foreign countries posing as tax officials. They used to call people using high-tech devices.