New Delhi, Jul 14 (IANS): In a major crackdown, the Delhi Police on Wednesday said it has busted a fake call centre for allegedly impersonating as officials of the Ministry of Finance Department of the US, which provides free grants to the selective citizens and arrested 19 people.

A senior police official said that the Cyber Cell of the South District police of Delhi Police busted an international call centre cheating US citizens from Malviya Nagar area.

The official said that it has arrested 19 people and seized 22 computers, 21 mobile phones, six routers and three switches from them.

The official said that the action was based on an anonymous information through e-mail about the illegal call centre in the Malviya Nagar area and the raid was conducted on Tuesday night.

The police said that the call center was running since January 2021 in a rented accomodation.

He said that a total of 22 computer systems were installed in the premises, out of which 15 were being used by the callers including three of them as supervisors who took calls from agents after getting the calls matured, while one computer was used by technical assistant.

The official said that 16 persons -- 8 men and 7 women were found involved in calling the customers in the US impersonating as officials from Ministry of Finance Department which provides free grants to the selective citizens.

"They were cheating innocent people based in US by using Vicidial through Cloud servers, then talking to the customers on the pretext of providing them free grants, if the customer pays a fee of $100 and $200 or the same amount through gift cards of google pay or any other wallet," he said.

The official said that on checking of computer systems, Vicidial calling software along with scripts were found opened on their screens.

"They were contacting the victims through the automated computer system to dial the phone numbers one by one in sequential order from the list of phone numbers uploaded in cloud based server, to induce the customers in the name of providing free grants after paying a basic fee. These calls were automatically being transferred to the caller who was free to attend at that time," he said, adding that the examination of mobile phones of callers or owners revealed that there were WhatsApp groups containing the chatting/information about the business of their cheating.

On examination of alleged persons, it was revealed that the alleged persons are procuring victims gift cards illegally and cheating overseas victims of United States by impersonation, cheating and forgery, with the help of each other.

Explaining the modus operandi, the official said, "Callers were engaged in calling the customers in US impersonating as officials from Ministry of Finance Department, US which provided free grants to the selective citizens."

The police claimed that on an average three innocent US citizens were being cheated every day and as an average approximately Rs 50,000-75,000 was being cheated from them.