All 118 call centre staff accused in Pune scam targeting US citizens with 'digital arrest' threats
Image used is for representational purposes only
PUNE: The Pune police named all 118 call centre executives as accused in the Kharadi fake call centre case that was cracked open on Saturday. The crime branch officers are questioning five of those already arrested in the case.
Senior inspector Swapnali Shinde of the cyber police station said, "We have made all of them accused in the case and served them notices asking them to cooperate with the investigations. These calling agents were aware of their crimes, hence we made them the accused."
On Sunday, five teams carried out a raid in Navi Mumbai while another squad is in Ahmedabad in Gujarat on the lookout for the three suspects who ran the call centre and would visit once a fortnight.
They have been reported missing.
The call centre staff posed as US law enforcement officers and extorted millions of dollars from US citizens using threats of 'digital arrest' in cases of narcotics or other frauds. Police found 123 persons, including 12 women, when they raided the facility. They would rake in 30,000-40,000 USD per day, they added.
The case was transferred to Pune city crime branch on Sunday and inspector Ajay Waghmare took over the investigations.
by Taboola
by Taboola
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On Saturday, police arrested Sarjitsingh Girawatsingh Shekhawat (26), Abhishekh Ajaykumar Pande (29), Shrimay Paresh Shah (31), Laxman Amarsingh Shekhawat (28), and Aron Arumugan Christian (29), all residents of Kharadi.
They are natives of Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan and Ahmedabad in Gujarat and have been staying in Pune for the past year, police said. The call centre has been in operation since July 2024, and the agreement to run the call centre from Pune from hired premises was signed and executed in Jaipur in Rajasthan, police said.
"We are probing why the call centre was in operation in Pune instead of Ahmedabad or Jaipur and why was the entire staff hired from Ahmedabad, Rajasthan, Delhi, Noida, and Kolkata," police said.
On how the call centre was sourcing US citizens' data, a senior officer told TOI, "We suspect that some people in the US were selling data to them using the darkweb to avoid monitoring by their govt agencies. We have also seized written scripts handed over to the call centre executives. We are looking for the person or people who wrote them," Shinde said.
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