Two fake call centres busted in Punjab, 155 employees held

Chandigarh: The Cyber Crime Division of Punjab Police has busted two fake call centres running in Mohali, near here, and arrested 155 employees for making fraudulent calls to people living in the US and duping them, police said on Friday.

In a post on X, Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said both the call centres seemed to be run by Gujarat-based kingpins.

Yadav said preliminary investigations have revealed that the fake call centres were operating during the night and callers were using three modus operandi to dupe foreign nationals by making them purchase gift cards from Target, Apple, Amazon, etc.

These gift cards were shared with a team manager and redeemed by the kingpin or owner, he added.

Additional Director General of Police (Cyber Crime) V. Neeraja said intelligence inputs about fake call centres operating in Mohali were developed by Inspectors Gaganpreet Singh and Daljit Singh along with their team with technical assistance from the digital investigation training and analysis centre (DITAC) lab of cybercrime.

She said after zeroing in on the locations, police teams raided both call centres and arrested all 155 employees working there.

However, both the kingpins are absconding and police teams are working to nab them, she added.

Neeraja said out of 155 arrested, 18 employees were taken on police remand, while the rest were sent on judicial remand.