Pune: Police on Wednesday raided an illegal call centre allegedly operated from three shops in a commercial building in Hadapsar and detained 32 people for cheating citizens of the US after installing malware in their computers, laptops and phones. A search is on for two more persons. Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Nikhil Pingale told TOI: “The call centre had been operational since Feb this year. Two men from Ahmedabad in Gujarat were illegally running it with the help of some Pune residents.”As per a preliminary estimate, the centre had duped US citizens of Rs 10 crore, he said. “Of the 32 detained people, 29 are call centre employees and three are managers.”Pingale said the employees exploited loopholes in the computers, phones or laptops used by American citizens and installed malware in them. “Once the equipment started running slow, the employees would call their victims posing as back-up technicians from software companies. After claiming to repair the systems, they would accept money from US citizens in the form of online gift cards, cryptocurrencies, and others,” the police officer said.In May, police unearthed an illegal call centre operating out of a commercial complex in Kharadi for almost a year and extorting American citizens of millions of dollars after threatening them with “digital arrest” in fake cases, and arrested five out of its eight key operators. As many as 64 laptops, 41 cellphones, four routers and even the “threatening” scripts were seized from the call centre.Later in July, the CBI raided another such facility in Kharadi and arrested three people. This centre too was cheating US citizens using the same threat.
