HYDERABAD: Cybercrime police, along with SOT Balanagar, arrested nine persons for allegedly operating a fake international call centre at Ayyappa Society in Madhapur, while two prime accused remain at large. The fraudsters manipulated Australian citizens into transferring large sums of money to various Australian bank accounts owned by Indians residing in the country. Over two years, they amassed Rs 8–Rs 10 crore through various frauds including online part-time jobs fraud.
The accused established the fake call centre in the name of RIDGE IT Solutions in 2024, hired seven persons from Kolkata, accommodated them in Madhapur, and trained them to make fraudulent calls in Australian accents. The key accused, Praveen and Prakash, engaged persons from Kolkata to work at the call centre. They collected bank accounts from Indian students studying in Australia and used them to receive illegally obtained funds, later routing the money to India through Hawala, cryptocurrency transactions, and other covert routes.
Accused Ganesh and Keshav from Khammam district managed daily office operations and facilitated the stay and movement of Kolkata employees. The investigation revealed a coordinated international cyberfraud wherein Praveen’s team received “leads” from another unidentified group that sent fake pop-ups and emails to Australian citizens, falsely claiming that their computers were compromised.
When victims called the number on the pop-up, the call was routed via the X-Lite application to the call centre. The accused then convinced them to grant remote access through AnyDesk, a remote software that allows users to access computers from anywhere, and transferred large sums from their online banking accounts to Australian accounts belonging to Indian nationals. These funds were later moved to India through clandestine channels.
During the raid, police recovered 45 Australian bank accounts stored on an office mobile phone and suspect that hundreds more were fraudulently misused over the last two years.