Couple held for operating fake call centre

New Delhi: Police have arrested a couple and two of their accomplices who were allegedly operating a fake call centre and duping people through mobile-based money transfer, financing and micro-financing service.

The accused used to call up people and on the pretext of announcing bonus points on their credit and debit cards used to extract details of their cards and then would allegedly siphon off money from their bank accounts.

Once they received the money, they used to transfer it to their own accounts using M-Pesa, the mobile-based money transfer, financing and micro-financing service provided by Vodafone, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.

Those arrested have been identified as Tej Bahadur, kingpin of the racket, Uma Bharti Kushwah, her husband Amar Prajapati, and Brajesh Narayan Shukla. They used to cheat their targets in instalments of Rs 5,000 which is reportedly the per day limit of the M-Pesa service, police said.

They had appointed over a dozen female tele-callers on payroll whose job was to allure the customers and obtaining secret details of their credit cards. The gang was busted after the police raided their fake call-centre at Noida on Monday, police added.