The thugs contacted the foreigners by posing as representatives of private companies
Twenty-five workers of a call centre in Noida were arrested on Thursday for allegedly duping foreigners, including US nationals, in a suspected cyber scam busted by the STF and the police, officials said.
The call centre is located in D block of Sector 59 in Noida from where the workers were held in a joint operation by a team of the Special Task Force (STF) Lucknow headquarters and the Sector 58 police station, they said.
"During the police action, 25 people were arrested for duping foreigners online and thereby making money fraudulently. 34 mobile phones, 22 computer systems, four laptops, five internet routers etc. were seized from the spot," said a police spokesperson.
The thugs contacted the foreigners by posing as representatives of private companies approaching them to resolve their tech-related problems, police said.
"The thugs told the gullible foreigners that their computer systems or their IP (internet protocol) address have been compromised and assured to get the issues fixed," the police official said.
"Then they would have their targets download Any Desk app on their systems (to take remote control of the systems). The accused took payment in the form of gift cards between USD 100 and USD 500 for leading online brands," he added.
Those held have been identified as Jayant Lal, Manik Siwach, Mohd Sabir, Shiva Kashyap, Mohit Grover, Adil Rizvi, Divyam Sharma, Ritik Malhotra, Saksham Malhotra, Himanshu Bhardwaj, Rohit Yadav, Ankur Soni, Kailash Shahi, Firoz Alam, Bhupendra Singh Yadav, Afroz Khan, Yudhishthir Kumar, Manish Tiwari, Gautam Sehgal, Yash Makkad, Anubhav Tyagi, Sanjeet, Chandrapal Singh, Neeraj Yadav and Nadeem, police said.
Some others linked to the scam are absconding but have been identified, they said.
An FIR in the case has been lodged under Indian Penal Code sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating), 467, 468 and 471 (all related to forgery) and under provisions of the Information Technology Act.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)