Gurgaon: A call centre in Palam Vihar allegedly targeted US citizens with a sophisticated tech-support scam, posing as Apple customer service representatives and using forged Federal Trade Commission (FTC) notices to scare victims into paying thousands of dollars. FTC, among other things, targets scams and identity theft.During a raid on the call centre on Tuesday, cyber police arrested 11 people who were operating from a rented house in J block. They also seized nine laptops, 20 mobile phones, two headphone-and-mic sets, two cars, a motorcycle and a scooter.The accused are Pritpal Singh, Mohammad Rijan Ansari, Chaitanya Goyal, Manish, Shahrukh Ansari, Sanjeev Pandey, Shivam, Aditya, Deepak Trivedi, Varun Gautam and Neeraj.Explaining their modus operandi, police said the men first contacted people claiming their phones had been infected with a virus or were facing technical problems. They then directed them to a virtual toll-free number, where the men posed as Apple employees and offered to “fix” the devices.The men allegedly used X-Lite Dialler and Apple FaceTime to communicate with the victims. The platforms’ encryption and one-call-at-a-time setup made the communications difficult to trace. They showed victims the fake FTC notices which claimed their devices posed serious data-security and privacy risks, creating a sense of urgency and fear, and then demanded between $10,000 and $20,000 to resolve the purported threat.“The money was allegedly transferred to a foreign bank account provided by the call centre operator. In some cases, they also allegedly obtained gift card or voucher numbers from the victims,” a police officer said.Each caller was paid a commission, police said. The investigators are now trying to identify the main operator and trace the money trail.A case was registered at Cyber Crime West police station under BNS sections of cheating, cheating by personation and criminal conspiracy, along with sections under the IT Act.
