Madhapur call centre bust: 115 held for cheating US citizens as Amazon agents

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad Police on Friday raided a fake international VoIP call centre in Vittal Rao Nagar in Madhapur, and arrested 115 cyber fraudsters. The accused were allegedly cheating foreigners through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls by pretending to be executives from Amazon and the US Customs and Border Protection cell department. The police claim that the gang has been running the scam for over two years.

The accused have been identified as Md. Ansari Mohirfan, Ghanchi Akib, Pradeep Vinod Rathod, Osman Ghani Khan, Shivam Pradhan, Deepu Thapar, and 109 others. The company’s director has been identified as Mohammed Zubair Ahmed. They were booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Scammers steal Amazon gift cards, convert them into crypto

According to Stephen Raveendra, commissioner of police, Cyberabad, “Employees from the call centres would make random calls to US citizens, claiming to be from Amazon, the retail giant. They would ask if the person made an order and if the answer is yes, they would ask them to press 1. If someone presses 1, they’re connected to fake tele callers who ask for their order IDs. If the person doesn’t have one, the tele caller creates fear about the order and would claim that money would be deducted and the credit score will take a hit.”

He said, “The customers, tricked by the tele callers, would share personal data like name, age, address, and bank details. Later, team leaders would call them Amazon executives, saying that the order was cancelled and convince them to buy Amazon gift cards.”

“The team leader would collect the gift card redemption codes and share them with the company’s director, Mohammed Zubair Ahmed. These codes are put on a website for cryptocurrency. When redeemed, they get crypto money. They would convert the crypto into USDT via a Trust wallet and sell it to local Bitcoin vendors for Indian currency. This scam has been going on for over two years, targeting US citizens and earning the scammers easy money,” added the Cyberabad commissioner.

Speaking more on the modus operandi, Stephen Raveendra said, “The fraudsters would call US citizens also pretending to be from the US Customs and Border Protection cell department. They would claim that the victim has received a parcel containing suspicious substances and that they would be arrested if they didn’t buy gift cards to cancel the parcel. The victims would buy the gift cards and give the redeem codes to the fraudsters.”

The fraudsters then sold the gift cards at a discount on the Paxful website. The buyers of the gift cards paid the fraudsters in cryptocurrency. The fraudsters then converted the cryptocurrency into USDT (Stablecoin) on the Trust cryptocurrency exchange platform. The fraudsters then looked for people who wanted to buy cryptocurrency in cash or through IMPS and UPI transactions.

During the operation, the police seized seven laptops, 115 CPUs, 94 monitors, four routers, and 120 mobile phones. Additionally, a significant sum of Rs 2.55 lakhs in cash was confiscated, along with an Audi car with registration number GJ-01/AX-8736.