Hyderabad: Two held for impersonating as technicians of home appliance firms

The arrested persons - Mohammed Saleem and Mohammed Arif had set up a call center in the city and appointed a few executives to attend the calls and connect the caller to the technicians.

Hyderabad: Two persons who were impersonating as authorised technicians from leading home appliance companies and conning gullible people were arrested by the Hyderabad police here on Tuesday.

The arrested persons – Mohammed Saleem and Mohammed Arif had set up a call center in the city and appointed a few executives to attend the calls and connect the caller to the technicians.

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To hoodwink the customers, they marked locations of service centres of noted companies like Samsung, LG, Godrej and Whirlpool companies on Google maps in different cities in India.

Joint Commissioner of Police, Detective Department, Gajurao Bhupal said, “through Google advertisements they were promoting their service centres and when a customer contacted them over phone, they attended the calls and sent technicians.”

The gang had arranged 555 phones with 1,000 SIM cards for carrying out its operations and posted the address of ‘Sky Line Customer Care Repair Servicing Centre’ and “IFB 1 Global Techno Service’ in Ramanthapur on Google and cheated people.

They claimed to authorised by the companies for taking up repairs and sent the technicians who collected Rs 2500 to Rs 5,000, said the police official pointing out that charges collected by them for services were exorbitant.

The police said those in need of services usually prefer to check the first or the second option in Google search and in process fail to verify authenticity of the website. By paid advertisements, the duo managed to get the first or second preference in the search and conned customers.