In a significant breakthrough, the Punjab Police’s Cyber Crime Division has dismantled two fake call centres operating in Mohali and arrested 155 employees involved in defrauding US residents through fraudulent calls.

Providing details, the state Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav on Friday said that the first call centre was located at Plot #F88 in Sector 74, SAS Nagar; while the second one was situated at A-One Tower, also in Sector 74, SAS Nagar. Both operations appeared to be orchestrated by kingpins based in Gujarat, he said.

DGP Yadav revealed that preliminary investigations indicated that these fake call centres operated during nighttime hours. “The fraudsters employed three distinct methods to deceive foreign nationals into purchasing gift cards from retailers like Target, Apple, and Amazon. The obtained gift cards were then passed to a team manager and subsequently redeemed by the kingpin or owner.

The state Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Cyber Crime, V Neeraja elaborated during a press conference that intelligence inputs regarding the fake call centres targeting international victims were developed by Inspector Gaganpreet Singh and Inspector Daljit Singh, along with their team. They received technical assistance from the Digital Investigation Training and Analysis Centre (DITAC) Lab of Cybercrime, which played a crucial role in the investigation.

“After zeroing in on the locations, Police teams under the supervision of SP Cybercrime Jashandeep Singh, led by DSP Prabhjot Kaur, raided both the fake Call centres on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, and arrested all the 155 employees who were working as diallers, closers, bankers and floor managers. However, both the kingpins are absconding and police teams are working to nab them,” she added.

V Neerja said that the police teams have also recovered 79 desktop computer units, 204 laptops, mobile phones, and other accessories etc, besides scripts for training to talk to the customers.

“Out of the total 155 arrested, 18 employees were taken on police remand, while, rest of the arrested persons were sent on judicial remand. Further investigation to ascertain the total fraud committed is in progress,” she said, adding that more arrests are expected in the coming days.