Police bust 8 cyber fraud centres in Guwahati city

 ‘Each centre defrauds crores of rupees monthly’

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Police swung into action on the intervening nights of September 14 and 15, and busted as many as eight fake call centres from as many locations in Guwahati. These fake call centres and customer service centres are out to defraud gullible Indians and foreigners through the internet.

The Guwahati police, divided into over 15 teams led by DCPs and ASPs, raided the customer service centres at the same time after midnight and caught three of the masterminds. Of course, some of the masterminds gave the police the slip.

Speaking to the media today, Commissioner of Police Diganta Borah said that the police acted on the cyber police station case (08/2023 U/S 120(B)/419/420/385/467/468/471/507 IPC read with Sec. 65/66/66(B)/66(C)/66(D) of the Information Technology Act, 2000). He said that the cyber fraud had been active in Guwahati for the past two years.

According to the Police Commissioner, they received intelligence input that some scammer gangs were involved in operating call centres across India and were scamming and cheating gullible Indians and foreign nationals by impersonating as tech support staff by originating “Tech Support” pop-ups in personal computers and by impersonating as legitimate customer service representatives to deceive individuals and cheat them of their money or personal information, making various false claims to create a sense of urgency.

“This gang of scammers initiates contact through unsolicited phone calls, claiming to be from a well-known company or organization, such as a bank, tech support, government agency, or even a popular online service provider. They ask the victims to install remote desktop software, thereby taking access to the victim’s personal computers, and thereafter steal personal information by planting malware on the targeted victim’s devices. These scammers also open fake toll-free numbers (TFNs), where, if dialled by anyone, the calls will land at the call centres run by these scammers. Upon receiving such calls, the trained call takers engage the caller in such a way by going through the prepared transcript of such a conversation, resulting in forcing the gullible victims to part with their hard-earned money or personal information, thereby duping those gullible Indian and foreign nationals,” the Police Commissioner said.

On the modus operandi of the police, the Police Commissioner said that they conducted a confidential inquiry and identified the mastermind based on the inputs received. He said that they formed more than 15 police teams led by senior officers and simultaneously raided the individual targets and busted eight such fake call centres.

The Police Commissioner said that the two masterminds who fled Guwahati by road on a rented car, after getting a hint of the police action, were apprehended late at night at a place near Bhabanipur by the Bajali district police.

According to the Police Commissioner, this is part of the international gang of scammers who have been duping gullible Indians and foreign nationals by impersonating genuine tech support staff, who mostly operate at night in innocuous-looking buildings to avoid the attention of the public and law-enforcement agencies. “They ensure that not a single ray of light is visible inside the building from outside to avoid any suspicion. A lease line connection is taken from different Internet service providers under some fake names to establish 400 or 500 lines in exchange for making or receiving internet-based calls (VoIP). They recruit gullible, educated, and unemployed youth, both males and females, in the name of providing employment in call centres and engage them in the scamming operations,” the Police Commissioner said.

The detained employees of the call centres during the raids are from states like Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, and Tripura. “Monetary transactions from the victims are mostly in the form of Bitcoin or in the form of gift vouchers. All these Bitcoins and gift vouchers are encashed or redeemed into Indian rupees with the help of an international Hawala Gang, or Angeria. Hard cash comes from outside the state for running these call centres in Guwahati and also to make payments to the employees through Hawala channels. Innumerable victims have lost their hard-earned money to these scammers. The monthly turnover of an average call centre runs into several crores,” the Police Commissioner said.

The locations of the call centres where raids were conducted were at Bamunimaidam (backside of Sicedom); Mono-motors building at Bamunimaidam; VIP Road, Borbari (opposite Trust Motors); Outshire Solutions at Zoo Tiniali; above AG Medicare, Rajgarh Road; ABC Point near Hotel D-Agni Dip; Christian Basti; and Guwahati Central, Zoo Road. The masterminds arrested so far are Debajyoti Dey alias David (31) originally from the Karimganj district and currently residing at Jayanagar in Guwahati; Rajan Sidana (39), hailing from Ludhiana; and Divyam Arora (31), hailing from Delhi.

According to the Police Commission, David also has his office and residence in Dubai to hide when caught. The police also detained 191 staff members—144 males and 47 females.

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