Cyberabad police bust fake call centre duping Australian, Canadian citizens; 13 held

Earlier, in two separate cases, the Cyberabad Police had arrested eight people over the past fortnight for allegedly procuring and selling the personal data of 66.9 crore and 16.8 crore individuals, and organisations.

Read more: Faridabad man selling confidential data of 66.9 cr people nabbed

How did they cheat?

The accused called people in Australia and Canada and offered them technical help, the police said.

“They offered their technical support by telling the victims that their account has either been hacked or had a security threat,” Petbasheerabad Station House Officer Gouri Prashanth told South First.

“They used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls and other illegal techniques for this purpose,” he added.

Based on a tipoff, the police arrested the accused from an apartment where they had been allegedly running the fake call centre.

Read more: Hyderabad complaint helps cops nab Noida gang selling data

Four of the accused were identified as Rabesh Kumar Prasad (39) and Sarbesh Kumar Gupta (32) from West Bengal, and London-based Bairic Pramod Reddy Fand (36), and Kunchala Ajay Kumar (37) from Telangana.

Three others, Ramakrishna Reddy, Akash, and Weseley, were absconding, the police said.

While Akash and Wesley were customer data vendors, nine others were telecallers.

The police added that the accused used to ask victims to pay a specified amount through gift cards.

“The amount was deposited in Australia-based bank accounts by the overseas contacts of the accused,” Prashant said.

The police have seized 13 desktop monitors, 14 CPUs, 13 headsets, one hard disk,  a pen drive, one memory card, eight new SIM cards, 18 mobile phones, three expensive wristwatches, a Toyota Fortuner car, ₹5,940 in cash, internet routers, telecommunication software and incriminating data from the computers, and mobile phones.