PNS | DEHRADUN
The Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) busted a fake call centre in Dehradun and arrested 13 accused for their alleged involvement in scamming American and Canadian citizens by impersonating representatives of companies like Microsoft and Apple. According to the senior superintendent of police of STF Navneet Singh Bhullar, the accused operated a call centre named Exolent Solution in Chaman Vihar, Saharanpur Road. They used to send pop-up messages to American and Canadian citizens, falsely claiming their systems were compromised due to visits to pornographic websites. Then they contacted the victims posing as Microsoft or Apple officials using X-LITE dialers and demanded payments to fix the issue.
The SSP said that based on confidential information, a police team was formed under STF’s supervision, which raided the call centre late on Tuesday. The raid led to the arrest of 13 individuals who admitted to running the fraudulent operation. The police seized 13 laptops, two Wi-Fi routers, three network switches, a media converter, extension cords, laptop chargers, headsets, mobile phones and other equipment used in the scam, Bhullar said. He further stated that during interrogation, the accused revealed that they had been running the call centre for a long time, specifically targeting foreign nationals. They used remote access applications like Anydesk, TeamViewer and UltraViewer to gain control of victims’ devices, tricking them into believing their data was compromised. Fake scripts were found on the seized devices, including ones used to impersonate US Treasury officials and scare victims into making payments, as per SSP.
He said that the police have registered a case under various relevant sections. The investigation is ongoing and efforts are being made to identify other individuals involved in the scam, he said.
