Delhi Police busts international cyber fraud gang duping job aspirants with WFH roles, 4 held

The Delhi Police has busted an international cyber fraud gang running a fake call centre for duping unemployed youths on the promise of providing them with work-from-home (WFH) roles with an e-commerce company, officials said on Monday.

Four accused -- Amit Kedia (30), Sachin Gupta (36), Rohit Jain (36) and Pradeep Kumar (34) -- were arrested, police said, adding that the kingping of the gang, Gulati, operated from Dubai. The accused posed as officials of the e-commerce firm and procured details of job seekers from various online job providing portals such as Naukri.Com and Shine.Com, they said.

The matter came to light after a complaint was received from a woman who alleged that she received a message from an unknown mobile number. The caller introduced himself as Nathalie from Amazon Company and subsequently, she was cheated of Rs. 3,15,745 on the pretext of work from home after she followed the link to a fake website that was shared by the accused in a WhatsApp message sent to her.

During enquiry, it was found that the cheated money was transferred to various bank accounts via Paytm, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Sagar Singh Kalsi said technical analysis of call details and money transaction revealed that the complainant received a WhatsApp message from a Philippines number and the cheated money was transferred to various bank accounts of different metropolitan cities of India.

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When accused Pradeep Kumar was apprehended, he disclosed that he used to sell activated current bank accounts of his locality to his associates Amit Kedia and Sachin Gupta and based on his instances, his two associates were apprehended and more bank accounts were recovered from their possession, he said.

"Kedia and Gupta disclosed that they along with their team leader Rohit Jain ran a call centre at a flat in Delhi's Ashok Vihar, which was used for transferring the amount to Dubai. Subsequently, Jain was also apprehended," he added.

Jain told police that he and his absconding partner Jigar work for Gulathi. He along with Jigar had visited Dubai in July where they met Gulati, who briefed them about his plan to dupe people and earn quick money through cyber frauds, the DCP said.

"Gulati with the help of some website developers had created a fake website https://amazon9910.Com/ which has the same user interference as that of the genuine e-commerce Amazon website. Gulati then contacted victims who were looking for jobs via Philippines-based WhatsApp number and allured them for work from home-related jobs. The deliberate use of Philippines-based number was done by Gulati to evade arrest and divert the investigation," the senior police officer said.

Then link to fake website was sent to victims from the alleged WhatsApp numbers for the completion of various tasks. Money was sought from the targets on the pretext of opening a virtual wallet and after successfully completion of task, they were assured that the money will be added to the virtual wallet. Along with website link, a virtual wallet was also provided in the fake website itself, he added.

After the cheated amount was transferred into various current bank accounts, the accused used to withdraw amounts from various  ATMs in Delhi and Jigar used to transfer the amount to Gulati in Dubai, police said. They said Rs 50,000 cash, 12 mobile phones, 22 SIM cards among various other items were recovered from the accused.