Sixteen members of a gang operating fake call centres of RBL Bank, who were involved in 34 cases in Cyberabad, and 166 cases across the country, were arrested on Wednesday.
They pretended as RBL Bank employees and cheated the account holders to the tune of ₹3 crore, Cyberabad Commissioner of Police M. Stephen Raveendra said while announcing the arrest of the gang members.
He said that the cybercrime police busted the call centre racket at Uttam Nagar, Delhi, and raided a hotel in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, and arrested them.
Recently, a victim approached the police stating that he got a call from a person who identified herself as a representative from RBL Bank to check whether his credit card was delivered or not.
When the complainant informed the caller that he had received the credit card but not the PIN number. “The fraudster asked him to provide PAN card details and also asked him to send the code which he would receive on deactivating the insurance amount of ₹24,000. He shared the code immediately and he received a message from the bank that an amount of ₹97,996 was debited from his credit card,” he said. Based on his complaint, a case was registered and a probe was launched. Explaining the modus operandi of the accused gang members, Mr. Raveendra said that the fraudsters collected RBL customers data, especially the card details from a bank employee, and established five to six call centres at Mohan Garden and Uttam Nagar in Delhi.
With the help of call spoofing applications, they contact the cardholders, who received new credit cards, by posing as bank employees. Then they collect OTPs by misguiding the customers in the name of activation of card or deactivation of insurance or increasing the credit card limit etc. After collecting OTPs, the fraudsters make transactions on their websites using the credit card details of the victims.
“They have registered six websites and three Individual Merchants linked them with payment gateways and used them for transferring the swindled amount into their bank accounts,” the officer said.
Based on the evidence collected during the investigation, DCP (Crimes) Rohini Priyadarshini sent a six-member team to Delhi who tracked down an office that was running the websites and portals for the fraudsters in Dwarka of the National Capital Region and apprehended six persons.
Interrogation of apprehended persons revealed information about a call centre being run by the accused at Uttam Nagar and from there the team has apprehended three more persons and returned to Hyderabad. Further investigation revealed that the prime accused was absconding and the police have started tracking him. “On information, one more team was sent to Ujjain where they apprehended seven persons,” the Commissioner said. Police froze ₹15 lakh in a bank account, seized three cars, including a BMW 520, a KTM bike, 865 fake Aadhaar cards, voter and PAN cards, 1,000 SIM cards, 37 cheque books, 34 mobile phones, apart from other material.
