The Cyber Crime West police station team in Gurugram raided and busted an unauthorised fake call centre operating out of J Block, Palam Vihar, on Tuesday, arresting 11 people accused of defrauding citizens of the United States through an elaborate impersonation scam. Police said the syndicate had been posing as customer service representatives of well-known US brands, including Apple, and using scare tactics involving fabricated virus alerts, technical glitches, and fake threats from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to extort large sums of money from victims.
According to police, the accused convinced US citizens that their mobile phones had been compromised by viruses or technical faults, prompting them to call a virtual toll-free number set up by the group. Callers then used X-Lite Dialler software and Apple's FaceTime application to communicate with victims in English, presenting themselves as legitimate technical support agents before escalating the interaction with threats involving fake FTC letters. Police said the scam had defrauded individual victims of amounts ranging between roughly USD 10,000 and USD 20,000, with the fraudulently obtained funds either transferred to foreign bank accounts provided by the call centre's operators or collected through gift vouchers and card numbers.
The 11 individuals arrested in the raid have been identified as Pritpal Singh, described by police as the team leader, along with Mohammad Rizan Ansari, Chaitanya Goyal, Manish, Shahrukh Ansari, Sanjeev Pandey, Shivam, Aditya, Deepak Trivedi, Varun Gautam and Neeraj. Police said the group had been operating the call centre out of a rented house in Palam Vihar for the past two to three months, with individual callers working on a commission basis under the direction of the team leader.
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During the raid, police seized nine laptops, 20 mobile phones, two headsets fitted with microphones, two cars, one motorcycle and one scooter from the premises. A case has been registered at the Cyber Crime West police station in Gurugram under Sections 318(4), 319 and 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with Sections 43, 66D, 72 and 75 of the Information Technology Act, covering offences related to cheating, criminal conspiracy, and computer-related fraud and unauthorised access.
Police said further investigation and legal proceedings are currently underway, including efforts to trace the flow of the fraudulently obtained funds and identify any additional individuals connected to the operation, including the call centre's owner. The bust adds to a series of similar crackdowns on illegal international call centres operating out of the Gurugram region in recent years, many of which have been found targeting elderly and vulnerable citizens abroad through fraudulent tech-support and government-impersonation schemes.
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