Another Indo-Canadian man has been arrested and charged in connection with Indian call centre scams targeting Canadians, costing over C$34 million for victims since 2014.
Abhinav Bector, 25, of Brampton, Toronto, has been charged with fraud over C$5,000, possession of proceeds of crime and laundering of the proceeds of crime. Bector is the latest suspect to be arrested in these scams. He will appear in court next month.
In October, Naman Grover of the city of Mississauga was arrested. Arrest warrants have also been issued against three other absconders -- Bindisha Joshi (41), Vimal Shrestha (41) and Thomas Pao (25).
According to police, call centre scamsters target Canadians by posing as representatives of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), banks, immigration and tech support agencies. They scare people into paying money or parting with their financial/credit card information immediately or face action.
The scamsters have also recruited local individuals as 'money mules' to receive money from their victims and then launder it to them. These include Indian students coming on study visas. Grover was a 'money mule' for the scamsters. Canadian investigations into India call centre scams began under 'Project Octavia' in October 2018.
Raids in India
The raids in Canada have an echo in India too as a major a crackdown on call centres invovled in instant personal loan apps in Telangana and Delhi. The Hyderabad Police arrested 17 people in raids conducted in Hyderabad and Gurugram last week after three persons committed suicide due to harassment by the employees of online loan apps early this month, including a techie and a woman government employee among those who ended their lives.
Hyderabad City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said four companies had hired around 1,100 executives to run the multi-crore illegal businesses through which thousands of people were victimised across the country.
The companies were identified as Liufang Technologies Private Ltd, Hotful Technologies Private Ltd, Pinpoint Technologies, and Nabloom Technologies Private Ltd and were registered in Bengaluru.
The police chief said that the Cyber Crime Police Station had recently registered nearly 16 FIRs pertaining to issue of loans by alleged unauthorised loan apps and harassment of the victims by the companies running the apps through their call centres.
Police raided two locations in Gurugram and three locations in Hyderabad which were running organised tele caller centres. These call centres were being used to persuade, harass and intimidate the loan defaulters.
Gurugram call centres
Eleven heads and important members of the call centres were arrested. They are Bindu Rani, Jyoti Malik, both of Haryana, Amit, of Gurugram, Ramandeep Singh, Manager, Prabhakar Dhangwal, both from New Delhi, Madhu Babu Singi, Manoj Kumar Singi, Mahesh Kumar Singi, Tharun, Pavan Kumar, and Jeevan Jyothi, all from Hyderabad.
"These callers took instructions from their heads in Indonesia. The entire operation of these loan apps appears to be run with Chinese nationals at the helm. This was also indicated during investigation into the multi-crore colour prediction gaming app scam where crores of rupees were transferred to shell companies which were registered as NBFCs," the police commissioner said.
The raids on the call centres led to seizure of nearly 700 laptops, servers, computer systems etc. Further investigation is on to find out the web of financial transactions, funding, technology base etc.
Meanwhile, Cyberabad police six people connected with loan apps Cash Mama, Loan zone and Dhana Dhan. Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar said Onion Credit Private Ltd and Cred Fox Technologies Pvt Ltd were connected with these apps.
Fake Loan apps
The accused are Konataham Sharath Chandra, CEO and Director of Onion Credit and Cred Fox, Pushpalatha, Director of Onion Credit and Cred Fox, B. Vasava Chaitanya, Director of Cred Fox, B.Venkatesh and Sachin Deshmukh, both collection agents and Syed Ashiq, team leader.
The arrests were made in connection with the complaint received by Cyber Crime police station of Cyberabad on December 7. The complainant alleged that the operators of loan apps were blackmailing and threatening him.
The two companies had two offices with 110 employees. They had entered into agreements with nine NBFCs. Both the companies have 1.5 lakh customers, of which about 70,000 are active.
They developed their own apps for maintaining the database of the customers and placed them in Google Play Store for easy download and available to customers.
According to police, the accused were offering small loan amounts with different apps and collecting repayments by way of harassment and blackmailing. Many innocent people got attracted by these apps and lost their money.
Police has issued notice to nine NBFCs who had tie-up with 'Cash Mama' and 'Loan Zone'. A notice has also been issued to Google to take down the applications because of their criminal activities. Police have seized 18 bank accounts and frozen an amount of Rs 1.52 crore.
