GHAZIABAD: A call centre operating from a room in a village in Ghaziabad has been busted with the arrest of nine men. The fraudsters, police said, targeted mainly US citizens by hacking into their systems and taking control of them by asking the users to install apps and software like Any Desk and Teamviewer. The accused would then get access to the bank accounts of the targets and transfer the money out of them. The nine arrested youths were identified as Jitender Kumar, Deepain Mahajan, Mohommad Ahsaan, Tamal Aacharya, Priyanka Franklin, Dominic, Rohan Ghosh, Ankit Nagpal and Rahul. Most of them, the police said, were from Jharkhand and Bengal. Gyanendra Singh, the additional deputy commissioner of police in the crime branch, said almost all the accused were school dropouts. “We had been getting repeated complaints from investigating agencies in the US. They said callers from the city had been targeting citizens there. We acted on a tip-off and raided the call centre that was operating from a small room in a village in Madhuban Bapudham. Nine persons were arrested from there,” he added. The police team seized seven laptops, eight mobile phones, a Wi-Fi router and other material from the room. The nine accused were booked under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 468 (fraud), 471 (fraudulently or dishonestly using a genuine document) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC and Section 66C/66D of the IT Act. “During questioning, they said they would mainly hack into the systems of US citizens. They would plant bugs and viruses into the systems and approach the users through pop-up messages. A helpline number would pop up on the screen. Any call made to that number would land at the centre in the village,” Singh said.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ghaziabad/9-held-for-duping-us-citizens-by-hacking-into-their-systems-in-ghaziabad/articleshow/96355421.cms