The Delhi Police in coordination with FBI Legal Attache and Interpol has arrested four men for allegedly cheating US citizens of more than 20 million dollars by running fake call centres.  According to police, the accused Parth Armarkar (28), Vatsal Mehta (29), Deepak Arora (45) and Prashant Kumar (45) were arrested from different parts of the country, including the kingpin, for allegedly defrauding the US nationals to the tune of 20 million dollars. Police said the accused operated call centres in Uganda and in several parts of India, including Delhi.

A senior police officer said Mehta, a native of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, is the head of the crime syndicate and supervised the functioning of the Uganda-based call centre.

Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) H S Dhaliwal said their team received information through IFSO, Special Cell through secret informers and also from the FBI through Interpol, indicating that some international cybercriminals, in conspiracy with each other and with the aid and assistance of co-conspirators based in India, the US and Uganda, were running call centers by posing as employees of the US Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, Drug Enforcement Administration, and other US agencies.

“We received information that one accused, Parth Armarkar, impersonated Uttam Dhillon. During his career, the real Uttam served as the Acting Administrator of the US Drug Enforcement Administration and as the Director of INTERPOL Washington. Armarkar defrauded victims of over six millions of USD through call centers operating in Uganda, Africa. He is an Indian national and occasionally visits India,” Dhaliwal said. He is an Indian national and visits India occasionally, the officer added.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Delhi Police shared technical evidence and information on Armarkar, which led our team to identify his whereabouts in Ahmedabad from where he was running part of the criminal activities,” the senior police officer said.

Armarkar was primarily operating his criminal activities out of Uganda. However, he also ran some part of his activities from different jurisdictions of India in assistance with his international co-conspirators.