Haryana: Cyber fraud racket busted in Kurukshetra; 11 arrested

Kurukshetra, Sep 20 (PTI) Police on Saturday claimed to have busted a cyber fraud racket operating under the guise of a call centre at Ladwa in Kurukshetra district and arrested 11 persons.

The accused have been identified as Mohit Setia, Vinod Kumar (Karnal), Paramjit Singh, Vijay Chhatri, Rohit Malhotra (Delhi), Nitin Rana, Akash (Yamunanagar), Amit Pol (Manipur), Jitendra Kumar (Bulandshahr, UP), Noor Hussain (Assam), and Akash (Kerala), police said.

During the raid, police seized 47 LCD monitors, 45 CPUs, 42 keyboards, and 18 headsets used for the fraudulent operations, officials said.

SP Nitish Aggarwal said the accused had been running the fake call centre for nearly one-and-a-half years.

They lured unsuspecting victims by posing as representatives of legitimate agencies, tricking them into sharing sensitive banking details, and then siphoning money through complex layers of fraud, the officer said.

"All the accused were trained in English-speaking skills and were provided with pre-written scripts to sound convincing on calls. They operated in three layers -- agents (who contacted he victims), closers (who pressured the victims into making payments, often via Bitcoin), and owners (who laundered the funds into cryptocurrency accounts)," Aggarwal said.

He also cautioned citizens about the increasing trend of "digital arrest" scams, stressing that no such provision exists in law.

"If anyone poses as a police or CBI officer and threatens you with digital arrest, immediately inform your family, contact the nearest police station, or dial the national cyber helpline No. 1930," he said. PTI COR CHS ARI