Picture for representational purpose only.

AHMEDABAD: As the special attaché of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the cyber cell of the Ahmedabad Police plan a crackdown on call centres that cheat US citizens, the cyber cell on Sunday arrested six more in an ongoing drive.

Previously, con call centres in Gujarat and Maharashtra used to cheat US citizens using the tax-evasion ruse. But for the past two months, the scammers have been deploying a new script. Deputy commissioner of police Rajdeepsinh Jhala of the cyber cell said that based on leads provided by US agents, it appeared that the con call centres shot bulk messages citing a car intercepted on the Texas-Mexico border. The scammers would tell their targets that the car had been hired in their name.

“They would tell the US citizens that blood stains or drugs had been found in the car,” a cyber cell official said. “Obviously, some people called back to say that they had not hired any car. The scammers then would tell them that their social security number had been stolen and they would have to pay to change it.” The official said the scammers would then pose as social security officers and ask for refundable deposits — that would never be ‘refunded’.

Jhala said his team has arrested Parth Gajjar who used to provide a cloud-based open source server for blasting bulk messages and receiving incoming calls without being identified. “He has studied till class 12 and has the experience of working in con call centres for ten years,” Jhala said.

According to cyber cell officials, another arrested accused, Ravi Rami, used to process the 16-digit card numbers through his agents in China and send them to con call centre owners. “We are tracing his hawala links,” an investigator said.

Jhala said that Purvang Panchal was also arrested on Sunday. “He used to make fake social media IDs for the con call centre operators. He was arrested in November 2017 as well because he used to process money for Monu Patel and Jay Patel, the two big con call centre owners,” he said. An investigator said that Aminkhan Kalyani alias Ammy, managed bulk messages and provided the means to the con call centre to talk to US citizens. The investigator said that Imran Ajmerwala provided computers on rent to con centre owners at Rs 700 to Rs 900 per month. The investigator said that Ajmerwala had rented out more than 50 computers to the main accused. “Bhavesh Parmar is a web designer and worked in a con call centre,” the investigator said.

Jhala said police have recovered one laptop, one iPad, and nine mobile phones from the six accused.

After three con call centres were busted by Sola police and cyber cell officials for cheating US citizens, FBI attaché Shoeb Dawood had arrived to meet cyber cell officials in the city.

