Fake call centre racket busted, CBI recovers over Rs 3 crore

A fake call centre was busted after the Central Bureau of Investigation conducted searches at four places in Delhi NCR in an ongoing cybercrime case.
The agency said it has recovered foreign currencies and Rs 3,09,64,100; 15 mobile phones; seven laptops containing remote-access application, TextNow app and fake international calling numbers. The sleuths also found incriminating documents pertaining to US nationals, crypto investments, chats containing details of the fraud and scripts for talking to US citizens.
The accused have been identified as Harish Kumar; Amit Kumar; Rakesh Kumar Athotra; Raj Kumari. CBI said a fake tech support call centre was found where the accused/other persons were allegedly involved in online cheating of US citizens impersonating as tech support executives.
According to the CBI statement, these accused would allegedly call potential targets in the US via Textnow application and take control of their systems using remote-access software like Any Desk on the pretext of solving issues.
It was further alleged that they would then guide the targets to buy a gift card for installing or upgrading the security software and take the card number from them.
It was also alleged that the gift card numbers taken from the targets were sent to an exclusive telegram group for cash redemption through hawala channel. A case was registered on June 6, 2022, against four accused and others on the allegations that the accused in conspiracy with each other and other unknown persons, had fraudulently gained remote access to the digital resources of unsuspecting victims in the US and transferred the digital assets from the accounts of the victims to their wallets.