Telangana police bust pan-India call centre racket, 14 held

In a major breakthrough, the Cybercrime police have busted a pan-India call centre racket operating from Delhi and arrested a 14-member gang.
Image used for representational purpose only
Image used for representational purpose only

HYDERABAD: In a major breakthrough, the Cybercrime police have busted a pan-India call centre racket operating from Delhi and arrested a 14-member gang. The gang members, who are involved in 295 cases across the country, including 14 in Cyberabad, illegally obtained credit card credentials of the SBI customers and duped them. During the investigation, police found that the gang used to make spoof calls, making the customers believe that they were calling from a call centre of SBI.

Spoofing is a method of falsifying the information of an incoming call on the receiver’s caller ID display. The receivers get an ID on their phones which appears as though it was from reputed institutions like banks. Using spoofing applications, the gang used to make calls and claim that they would activate or de-activate the card or enhance credit card limit and then used to drain their accounts. The accused used MoSIP Mobile Dialer, Silver Dialer, Round2Hell and iTell Mobile Dialer spoofing applications to make calls to the victims. The victims received calls as if they were from the toll free numbers of SBI. 

Believing them to be genuine calls, the victims used to share their credit card credentials only to find their hard earned money siphoned off from their accounts. 

Credit card scam: Spoofing tech led customers to fall prey to Delhi gang

The gang used to open fictitious accounts with popular websites like housing.com and nobroker.com and use spoofing technology to drain the credit from their victims’ credit cards into the fictitious accounts from where they withdrew the money, said Stephen Ravindra, Cyberabad Police Commissioner.

Nikhil Madaan
Nikhil Madaan

Inquiries revealed that the arrested persons have vast experience in the banking field and they collected SBI credit card holders’ data like names, mobile numbers and location from agents. One of the accused, Nikhil Madaan established a call centre, took reseller IDs for spoofing applications like MoSIP and Silver Dialer from another accused Murshid Alam, who in turn purchased these reseller accounts in dialer application from another accused Farman Hussain.

Farman developed websites, where user IDs for spoofing applications are available on payment. These applications were used to generate calls through the desired number to dissimulate the original number. Police seized an SUV, one bike, mobile phones, laptops and other electronic material from the accused.

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The New Indian Express
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