The Navi Mumbai Police have uncovered a large cyber fraud operation after raiding a fake call centre in Turbhe. Officials said the centre was involved in cheating foreign nationals of twelve point two nine crore rupees. The group mainly targeted people in the United States through false investment schemes and malware driven extortion attempts. The action was confirmed on Thursday.
The raid was carried out by the Cyber Police Station and the Crime Branch after they received an intelligence alert on eighteen November. Early investigation showed that the call centre was working under several fake company names that had been created using forged documents.
Police said the operation ran through two separate fraud models. At the time of the raid, ninety seven people were working at the site.
In the investment fraud model, the suspects contacted citizens in the United States through WhatsApp groups. They pretended to be financial advisers and promised high returns on stock market investments.
In the malware and ransomware model, another team carried out cyber attacks to get unauthorised access to devices. They used ransomware to lock systems and then demanded payment to restore access. Investigators said the fraud was supported by many WhatsApp accounts, SIM cards, virtual numbers and fabricated online identities, which made the network difficult to trace.
Police checked seventy one bank accounts linked to the call centre. Sixty one of them showed fraudulent transactions worth twelve point two nine crore rupees. The pattern matched records from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, where thirty one complaints across the country linked back to these accounts. Authorities have ordered the freezing of several customer linked accounts.
During the search, police seized a large quantity of electronic evidence. This included one hundred eight computer systems, thirty eight mobile phones, five GSM VOIP servers, eighty four extra mobile handsets, one hundred one SIM cards and eighty nine bank passbooks and documents. Officials said Look Out Circulars have been issued to stop key suspects from leaving the country.
A case has been registered at the Cyber Police Station in Thane under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including section three hundred eighteen clause four for cheating, section three hundred nineteen clause two for cheating by personation, and section sixty one clause two for criminal conspiracy. Provisions of the Information Technology Act have also been applied. All those arrested have been sent to police custody until twenty three November.
Officials said the network appears to be part of a larger national and international cybercrime system. Digital forensics teams are now studying seized devices, financial records and communication channels. A senior police officer said, “The operation reflects a large and organised cybercrime network. Further arrests and asset tracing are in progress.”
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