With the arrest of 14 people, the Noida Police on Thursday claimed to have busted a call centre being run to dupe US citizens on the pretext of tech support.

The call centre was being run for over a month now from a location in A block of Sector 108 — less than a kilometre from the Police Commissioner’s office here, according to police.

A senior officer said the gang was busted by a team of Sector 39 Police Station and the Cyber department on Wednesday.

“A bogus call centre has

been busted and 14 people arrested in this connection. The police have recovered 18 laptops, 1 internet router, 2 internet network switches, among others,” DCP (Crime) Shakti Mohan Avasthy

said.

“The gang was involved in duping US citizens and other foreigners. The accused would reach out to foreigners through email informing them about problems with their computers. They also offered solutions to these concocted problems by asking them to connect on particular helpline numbers,” Avasthy said.

Some gullible people who responded to their emails fell into their trap and called up the given helpline numbers, which landed up at their call centres using VOIPs and other technical means, the officer said.

“Once in their trap, the accused would pose as tech support experts and ask the gullible people to make payment through gift cards which were then redeemed by the accused,” Avasthy told reporters.

The officer said the call centre operators also did not have any regulatory license to run the facility.

Those held have been identified as Prins Chaudhary, Ram Rathore, Vaibhav Arora, Tansul Solanki, Ankit Pant, Kaushik Sen, Shivam Sharma, Dhruv Chopra, Saransh Dua, Navjot Singh, Vikki Singh, Mohd Nasir, Vaibhav Gaur, and Saurabh Awasthi, police

said.

An FIR has been lodged in connection with the case at the Sector 39 Police Station under IPC sections 419, 420, 120B and under provisions of the Information Technology Act, they said.