Srinagar: Cyber Police Kashmir busted fake call centres and arrested 23 persons who allegedly duped people by impersonating as executives of e-commerce companies.
An official statement issued on Wednesday said “Cyber Police Station Kashmir Zone, Srinagar on receiving inputs about some fake call centres took up the investigation into the instant matter and during the course of investigation, it revealed that some individuals are impersonating as executives of multi-national companies under garb of bogus international call centres and are duping innocent citizens by offering them technical support and solutions to their software problems”.
Stating that these fake call centre executives are making cold calls, and send e-mails, pop-ups on computer screens of the victims and used to take remote access of their computers and infect their systems with malware, thus starting extorting money from them in return for help by impersonating as technical support, the Cyber Police Kashmir in it’s statement further said “they also make use of electronic signatures of the victims for their illegal financial gains. These fake call centres would mostly call international citizens and demand their financial and bank details illegally so as to extort money from them to cause illegal gains for themselves and subsequent losses to victims”.
During the course of further investigation, the statement saof that there is a huge scam of fake call centres in Srinagar City, where a good number of employees are working round the clock , saying that, these fake call centres have been identified as are Secure Tech Rangreth Srinagar, YSS Micro Technologies Rangreth and Vertex Technology, Karfalli Mohalla Srinagar.
Acting swiftly Cyber Police Station Kashmir Zone Srinagar, according to the statement, constituted several teams in collaboration with District Police Srinagar and conducted multiple raids in Rangreth, Karfali Mohalla Habbakadal and Natipora areas of Srinagar, the statement said “during these raids 23 accused persons involved in running of these illegal fake call centres were arrested”.
The Cyber police Kashmir in it’s statement also said a case vide FIR No. 02/2021 under relevant sections of law stands registered at Cyber Police Station Kashmir Zone Srinagar and further investigation is in progress.
It’s pertinent to mention that fake call centres have become a full-fledged business in India and each unit earning between ?5-20 lacs per day, depending upon the size of their set-up. These scammers are mostly cheating people staying in foreign countries by posing as technical support executive, insurance agents, law-enforcement officers, bank officials, online shopping sites etc. The major issue is that young students are getting attracted to such call centres in lieu of the higher salary packages. These fake call centres earlier used to be limited to big cities only, however now they mushroomed in other parts of the country as well.
The investigation of the instant case is in progress and further details shall follow.
