CBI busts 2 fake call centres in Nashik that conned UK citizens, 2 arrested

CBI arrests two in Nashik for running illegal call centres, duping UK nationals by impersonating officials and selling fake insurance policies.

Mumbai: In a cyber-fraud racket bust on Saturday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested two members of a gang that ran two illegal call centres in Nashik. Operators of the call centres would impersonate insurance agents and government authorities to dupe nationals of the United Kingdom (UK).

CBI busts 2 fake call centres in Nashik that conned UK citizens, 2 arrested

The CBI has identified the two arrested accused as Shyam Kamnakar and Ganesh, who have been remanded to the agency’s custody till Monday by a special CBI court in Thane. Following searches at various locations in Nashik, Kalyan, and Thane, the CBI seized incriminating digital evidence, records related to the fraud, and ₹5 lakh unaccounted cash. Among the evidence, the CBI also found data about the victims, fake insurance policy documents, eight mobile phones, and eight computer systems. The agency is yet to disclose further details about the accused, the victims, and the amount involved in the fraud.

CBI officers said the call centres in Nashik were operating under an alias M/s Swagan Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Following several complaints by victims of the fraud, the CBI had registered a case on Thursday against several accused persons–unknown public servants and others–who were allegedly involved in the fraud.

Investigations revealed that around 60 persons were employed at the two call centres, which used VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), spoofed numbers and fake documents to convince victims to share their credit card and debit card details. VoIP is a technology that enables voice calls to be made over a broadband internet connection instead of a phone line. A spoofed number is when someone uses caller-ID-spoofing to display a fake phone number on the recipient’s phone. Agency officials said that the victims would then be made to pay for “non-existent insurance policies”.

Officials said that the accused made the victims pay them online payment systems and banking channels, and the money was transferred to accounts managed by their gang. The CBI has also shortlisted other suspicious call centres in Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik, and will investigate them for irregular activities.

Recently, the CBI had also busted two other fake call centres in the state. In August, the agency busted a cyber-fraud racket’s illegal call centre being run from a rented private resort at Igatpuri in Nashik. The fraud was targeting unsuspecting victims in the United States of America, Canada and other countries by impersonating customer care executives of an e-commerce platform and falsely claiming that there were pending orders that needed to be cancelled with the payment of an extra charge.

In July, the CBI had busted an alleged illegal call centre in Pune that was run by a cyber-fraud racket, where the accused extracted money from unsuspecting US citizens by claiming their accounts with two major e-commerce and consumer electronics platforms had been compromised and used for illegal activities.