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DEHRADUN: Acting on a complaint from Canadian police and Microsoft, Dehradun police on Wednesday busted a fake call centre racket operating in Patel Nagar and Clement Town areas and arrested five people for cheating citizens of Canada, USA, Australia and UK on the pretext of offering them services by posing as Microsoft representatives.

Dehradun police was alerted about the scam believed to be worth several million dollars, by Canadian police. The raiding police team was accompanied by representatives of Canadian embassy and Microsoft during the operation.

Elaborating on the scam, senior superintendent of police (SSP) Nivedita Kukreti told TOI, “We received a complaint from Microsoft about this tech-support scam running from call centres in Dehradun. After investigation, we zeroed in on four call centres — two inside Doon Business Park and two in Sandhu Centre. We have arrested five people who were operating these call centres.”

The accused were identified as Ranjan Kumar, 26, Mayank Bansal, 28, Raja Lamba, 46, Sandeep Rana, 41, and Anshul Shrivastav, 36.

Police said that the modus operandi of the fraudsters was to trap customers in foreign countries. “The call centre representatives used to call or webchat with the potential victim in English-speaking countries such as Canada, USA, UK or Australia,” Kukreti said.

The SSP added, “These operatives used to gain victim’s trust by claiming to be associated with Microsoft and then make false representations by telling the victim that their computer is sending error messages and has been infected by a virus. Requesting remote access, they claimed that they can fix the issue for a fee of $2500 (Rs 1.77lakh).”

Once they gained access into the victim’s computer, they used to make additional misrepresentations to sell fake solutions to the non-existent problem, Kukreti added.

Though the exact amount extorted through this technical support scam is not yet known, police said that the accused might have raised several crores from their victims using this modus operandi.

Giving details on the number of people the gang might have duped, Kukreti said, “The call centres were running for past one-and-a-half years and each representative was given a daily fixed target of speaking to potential victims. Although we are yet to ascertain the exact number of victims, but they can run into thousands.”

All accused have been booked under section 417 (cheating), 418 (cheating with knowledge that wrongful loss may ensue whose interest offender is bound to protect), 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating and dishonesty), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation) and 471 (using forged documents as genuine) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 43 and 66 of IT Act.

