Raipur Police have busted an inter-state gang operating fake call centers that cheated crores of rupees from people across the country. The gang has been running the fake call centers for the past four years, promising to provide loans to people and then taking them into confidence and demanding processing fees and other documents on WhatsApp. The gang was busted after an applicant, Mahfuz Ansari, lodged a report at Telibandha police station.
Ansari, who works as a liaison in Bhilai Steel Plant, was called by an unknown mobile number and was promised a loan by a person claiming to be Sujata Jain, the customer manager of City Finance Bank Mumbai. Jain demanded Rs. 4,000 as processing fees for loan-related documents and asked Ansari to send his Aadhaar card, PAN card, and other documents on WhatsApp. Ansari, who believed the call to be genuine, deposited the amount in different installments from February 23, 2022, to October 13, 2022. When the loan was not received, and he demanded his money back, the gang demanded more money from him, claiming it was needed to return his deposited amount.
The gang took a total of Rs. 25,84,681/- from Ansari and cheated him. The police registered a case against the unknown mobile number holders in Telibandha police station and started tracing the accused. The joint team of Anti-Crime and Cyber Unit and Thana Telibandha police started interrogating Ansari and analyzed the mobile numbers from which calls were received on his phone. They also collected information about the bank accounts in which money was transferred and located the accused.
The police team engaged in arresting the accused got success in locating them in Patel Nagar, Delhi, through technical analysis. A team of seven members of the Anti-Crime and Cyber Unit and Police Station Telibandha was sent to Delhi, where they raided the house where the call center was being operated. They found eight people, including five men and three women, operating the call center. The accused were identified as Yash Verma, Abhishek Kumar Jha, Brijesh Kumar, Sunny Kumar, Divya Gupta, Ranjita Yadav, Ruchi Verma, and Nisha Kumari, all residents of Delhi.
The police team seized five computer systems, two laptops, 20 mobile phones, one tablet, and a logbook diary worth about Rs. 5 lakh from their possession. The accused have been brought to Raipur on transit remand, and strict inquiries are being conducted. The police believe that the accused have cheated crores of rupees from people across the country by operating fake call centers.
