Police claimed to have busted a gang of telecallers who used to lure people in the name of lucrative schemes while claiming to double their amount and siphoned off the money later deposited by the people in the bank account.
“Six persons including the kingpin of gang have been arrested in this connection from a call centre based in Noida in Uttar Pradesh and cash amounting to Rs 71 lakh deposited by them in different bank accounts have been frozen,” Inspector General of Police-Raipur, GP Singh said while addressing a Press conference here on Sunday.
The accused had duped over Rs 29 lakh from a resident of Dhamtari district, he said. Giving details about the gang’s activities, the IGP informed all the accused were employees of a call centre by the name of ‘Augment’ based in Noida in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The call centre was hired by various companies dealing in insurance and similar schemes.
“The gang members used to collect data about their potential target from the call centre data bank and also hacked various ‘online information’ about the targets. They then made calls to the person and offered phony schemes claiming doubling of money in a short span of time,” the IGP said, adding for keeping the entire fraud look ‘genuine’ they asked the victims to deposit money through RTGS & NEFT process in the bank.
One of the other main accused Ehasan Qureshi who operated the call centre is on the run and would be arrested soon, Singh said.
According to the IGP, the callers identified themselves as representatives of reputed companies like Metlife, Birla Sun life, ICICI Prudential, Kotak Mahindra and similar other companies. More persons could be arrested in his connection, he said.
He also requested the people not to deposit money after believing people making any calls claiming to provide benefits more than the rates fixed by the banks.
The accused persons were identified as KK Singh, Imran Khan, Mehtab, Asif Khan, Vinod Kumar alias Alim Khan and Vipin Kumar. Notably three persons have already been arrested in this case.