Mumbai: The Borivali police on Tuesday arrested five people who were allegedly running an unauthorised call centre in the Gorai area. The suspects had procured personal data of American citizens from the dark web and targeted them to sell expensive banned lifestyle medicines like Viagra at highly discounted prices.
The police received a tip-off regarding such an establishment and carried out a raid from 9.30pm on Monday to 6.30am on Tuesday. “The five suspects had previously worked in call centres for years, and after that, decided to set up something of their own to make a quick buck. After finalising a property for their setup they bought data of American nationals from the dark web,” an official said, adding that the five had illegally hired employees and had trained them for the job.
Hard disks recovered
Using the pirated data, these call centre agents approached American citizens, and offered them medicines like Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, etc – banned without a prescription in the U.S. – and sold them at 30-50% discount. However, this was just used as bait to get money, as the customers were blocked after the payment was made.
Calls are made through the internet due to which the victims cannot trace the callers and the money transfer is done into various accounts online. “The targets think the call centre is being run in some Western country or in the U.S. as the call centre agents have mastered American English with the perfect accent. This helps them establish their authentication and gain trust,” added the official.
From the spot, the police managed to recover hard disks and data from computers and laptops that will be examined to find out details of the victims and how much money was swindled from them.
