NEW DELHI: A call centre operating out of a house in Moti Nagar was raided on Friday night and its 32 employees were arrested on charges of threatening and extorting money from Canadian nationals by impersonating the local police. The operation was conducted by West Delhi Police.Those arrested include the floor supervisors and young employees who are in their 20s. The owners are absconding.Investigation has revealed that the gang had allegedly procured a database of Canadians comprising their personal and financial information from the dark web and contacted them individually. The employees would use phone number spoofing technology to mask their number and the recipients would see Canadian Police number on their screens.The callers would be informed about non-existent Social Insurance Number (SIN) violations, and they would ask the victims to make payments up to 20,000 dollars to escape imprisonment.While the investigation is in an early stage, the cops said that probe till now indicated that the members of the racket were active on the dark web using TOR browsers. They would purchase the data of tax defaulters or people with past records of their brush with the law and create their target group.Police officials explained that in some countries, data of defaulters and violators get leaked from the government agencies and are uploaded on the dark web for sale like any other product. The data contains minute details like the person’s appearance, bank account details, contact numbers and email IDs that virtually act as a treasure trove for such criminals.The call centre was busted after intelligence agencies and the cops got a whiff following a complaint filed by a Canadian national named Elvis Henry who was duped of 13,500 $.On November 15, the west district cyber cell managed to get information about the location of the accused in Moti Nagar after which a team led by Uma Shankar, assistant commissioner of police, operations, was formed, and a raid was conducted in collaboration with telecom department officials.The 32 employees present there were rounded up and questioned. Fifty five computers, three internet distribution switch, three patch port, two internet routers, 35 mobile phones, cheating script pages and illegal software were seized by the police. One of the mobiles found at the spot had Bitcoin Blockchain wallet app as well.The gang was allegedly led by people identified as Raja, Sushil, Naveen, Bunny Arora alias Divyam Arora, Pankaj, Jasjot, Sarabhjot and Sagar. They gave details of their modus operandi.“The accused were also bypassing the legal gateways and telephone exchanges in their operations and were causing wrongful loss to the government exchequer," said Sameer Sharma, additional deputy commissioner of police, west."VoIP diallers violating directions of DoT were also found installed. DoT officials said that the accused had purchased unauthorised VoIP minutes from international markets, thereby causing huge revenue loss to Indian exchequer," the additional DCP added.Investigating officials have also written emails to four persons whose names were seen in the database. “All the seized computers will be checked to ascertain the number of people duped. Raids are being carried out at various locations to trace the alleged call centre owners,” an investigating officer added.