Gurugram, Dec 22 (IANS): The cyber crime team of the Gurugram Police on Thursday busted an illegal call centre that was operating here in the Sector 55 area, officials said.

The call centre mostly used to cheat US nationals on the pretext of technical support, the police said.

According to the police, a team of the cyber crime police station (east) led by Inspector Jasbir, raided the call centre which was running at house no A-126, Sushant Lok-2, Sector-55 in Gurugram following a tip-off.

During the raid, the police arrested 12 accused including the manager Vijay Tripathi, the owner Anil and three women in connection with the matter and seized 12 laptops and 1 mobile phone from the spot.

The arrested accused have been identified as Vijay Tripathi, Atif, Kartik, Ambrish, Ismail, Alex, Abdulla, Lalit Sharma, Nasir, Marsi Solo and three others.

"We received specific inputs that a fake call centre had cheated several US nationals on the pretext of technical support. The youths were employed at the call centre, which was being operated without a license issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DOT)," the police said.

"During the questioning, the accused revealed that they used to send text messages to US citizens to provide technical support of Amazon, Microsoft and Apple Paypal with the help of Dialler/X-Lite Application and used to charge $300/500 via e-gift redeemed card. The call was being run for the last six months. The employees of the fake call centre were getting salary plus insensitive from the call centre operators," the police said.

An FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the IT Act has been registered at the Cyber crime police station (east).