Fake call centre busted in Hyderabad, 13 persons held

Thirteen persons posing as representatives of Amazon Prime Company were cheating Australian and Canadian nationals

Hyderabad: Thirteen persons who had set up a call centre in the city and were allegedly cheating Australian and Canadian nationals by posing as representatives of Amazon Prime Company were arrested by the Cyberabad Police on Wednesday. The police seized laptops, desktop computers, pen drives, memory cards, a car, internet routers, telecommunication equipment and some cash from them.

The gang had obtained the data of 40,000 individuals from two West Bengal-based agents.

---

On a tip-off, the Cyberabad Special Operations Team and Petbasheerabad police raided a call centre being operated from a building and arrested Rabesh Kumar Prasad (39) and Sarbesh Kumar (32), both managers of the call centre, Bairic Pramod Reddy, K Ajay Kumar, Mukesh Razaq, Karma Shepal, Md Mustafa, Anamol Pradhan, Roy Rishkanth, Mohd Sameer, Gunji Pawan Kalyan, Sai Vara Prasad and N Basawaraju, all executives.

“The gang members posed as representatives of Amazon Prime Company and called the victims over the phone stating that their accounts faced a security threat. On the pretext of offering technical support to foil it, the gang collected money in form of gift cards which were later redeemed,” DCP Medchal G Sundeep said.

To contact the victims the gang was using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lines. “Two persons Akash and Wesley had supplied them the data of the individuals using which the gang cheated them to the tune of lakhs of rupees,” the DCP said. Both persons were absconding.