Gang duping American citizens busted by Belagavi police, 33 arrested

BELAGAVI: The cyber crime police have busted a notorious gang that was involved in cyber fraud, targeting American citizens and duping them out of lakhs of dollars. The gang, consisting of 33 young men from North India, was operating from Belagavi, posing as employees of a call centre.

The gang would obtain phone numbers from the dark web and call senior citizens in the US, claiming that a parcel had been sent in their name. They would then provide a phone number to ‘cancel’ the parcel and trick the victims into revealing their financial information, thereby stealing their money.

The police have seized 37 laptops and 37 mobile phones during the raid and arrested the accused. The gang had been operating since March and had been making around 100 calls per day, using various tactics to deceive their victims.

Police Commissioner Bhushan Gulabrao Borase said, “Three days ago, we received intelligence information about the call centre operating in Belagavi and based on this, a raid was conducted on the call centre at Kumar Hall on Bauxite Road. The police have seized 37 laptops and 37 phones and 33 from different states have been arrested. Their applications were on the cloud”.

“They had 11 scripts with which they cheated American citizens and were making VOIP calls through VPN. This is a big gang and one person is in Gujarat and two are in West Bengal whom we have to arrest. This is the biggest such cyber fraud in Belagavi. Since this case has international dimensions, we will include more sections under different Acts”, the police commissioner said.

As per initial investigation, the gang had been operating from a rented premises for the last 6-7 months. The first salary payout was made in March this year. The Belagavi city cyber crime police have registered a case and are investigating the matter further. The accused are currently in judicial custody.