BENGALURU: The state cyber command police arrested two persons for allegedly operating fake call centres in Bengaluru and cheating several US citizens by impersonating “QuickBooks”, a prominent US-based accounting software company. The accused, Prashanth from Delhi and Akash from Uttar Pradesh, are aged between 25 and 35.
Southeast cyber crime police, along with the special cyber cell, raided four locations where the fake call centres were operating in Bengaluru. The accused were impersonating QuickBooks and cheating US citizens by providing counterfeit tax advice, fake licence keys, licensing and renewal services and collecting large sums of money as fee.
The call centre personnel used fake names resembling those of the company officials and defrauded gullible citizens. During the raids, police seized 44 solid-state drives, two mobile phones, two laptops, nine CPUs, scripts prepared to converse with victims, and other accessories allegedly used for the fraud.
The preliminary probe revealed that the accused were operating the network for the past four years and had been in Bengaluru for the last two years. With around 30 employees, they operated from two locations in Koramangala and one each in HSR Layout and Choodasandra. When the employees were questioned, only a few were aware of the cheating.
The officer said they have launched a manhunt for the kingpins of the racket and two other accused who are absconding. The two arrested were operating the offices in the city by hiring college dropouts and other youngsters, employed with salaries upto Rs 20,000 per month. The accused had registered the company as a legitimate business entity and used multiple shell companies to siphon off huge amounts of money from US citizens.
FBI Boston flags scam
Federal Bureau of Investiga-tion (FBI) in Boston shared on X on Wednesday, “The FBI has shut down a call centre opera-tion in India that defrauded hundreds of elderly victims in the US and abroad of millions of dollars through tech suppo-rt scams. Two senior executiv-es who operated a business that enabled the fraud have admitted to turning a blind eye to the widespread scam.” FBI Boston investigation had resulted in the arrests and convictions of a former employee of the call-routing company and five India-based telemarketing fraudsters.