Gurugram call center reportedly cheated US citizens, fraud over bank loans

The show Time

A call centre that allegedly cheated US citizens on the pretext of assisting them in getting bank loans was busted in Udyog Vihar-2 on Saturday, the second such sham organisation to have come to the fore this year. The owner of the call centre, a high school passout, has been arrested along with two business partners. Police said they had been running the call centre for the past five months.

Unlike other sham call centres which used to cheat US citizens in the name of providing them tech support and or social security number, this call centre had a different modus operandi — the accused used to forge cheques in the name of the target to convince them that a bank had sanctioned loans for them and then ask them to pay US$100-500 through gift cards for the transaction.

“When we raided their premises on Saturday, 30-35 youths were already engaged in calls with foreign nationals. We have seized computers and hard drives from the office of the call centre,” said DSP. The owner of the call centre has been identified as Sarjeet Singh (21) from Rajasthan. His partners Kapil Dev Patel (32) from Ahmedabad and Bhudev Lohar (27) from Rajasthan were also arrested. An FIR has been registered against the trio under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and sections 75 (cheating a foreign national) and 66D (cheating by using computer resource) of the IT Act at Cyber Police Station.