Udaipur Police, in two separate incidents, have rounded up 34 people running illegal call centre and online loan business in Udaipur.

23 people including two females were arrested from a Call Centre operating from Orbit Complex in Hiran Magri - Sec 14 and 11 persons were arrested from a center operating in the Panchwati area today.  The raids were conducted under a police exercise being organised by the District Police Superintendent, Kailash Chandra Bishnoi.  Subsequent to his appointment as SP in Udaipur, Bishnoi has taken up the task of identifying such fraudulent call centers and his team of informers have been providing the clues for him and his team to act on.

As per the instructions based on intellgence provided by informers, the SP formed two separate teams - one under Goverdhan Vilas Police Station and Hathipol Police Station.  

A raid was conducted on the second floor of Orbit Complex situated at Hiran Magri - Sec 14 by the team from Hiran Magri Police Station and Goverdhan Vilas Police Station.  In the raid, 2 females among 23 persons were arrested.  The team recovered 37 computers and monitors, CPUs, Mouse, Key Boards and Headphones, modems, routers adn an antenna.  This was the complete infrastructure being used to run this call center from where on line frauds were committed by calling foreign nationals and extraditing money from them under the guise of Income Tax and Revenue officers. One four wheeler and Rs 2lac are the additional items that we were confiscated from the site. A case of fraud has been registered and investigations have commenced.

In another similar action, which was taken by the Hathipol Police Station, an informers intelligence said that a team of 11 people were running an office in Panchwati (near Sachin Motors) and dealing in online loan disbursement activities. The sites were being run under the Cash Net Advance and PayDay Loan schemes from this center.  The center employees - 11 in number were all well educated and were conversant with American Accent English. The callers used Google White list pages to call numbers in the USA and lure them with cheap loans.  The money for processing charges were recieved in a Google Pay account and then received in Indian currency through the Havala route. 11 people along with Rs 67000 cash and 13 laptops along with other networking and calling infrastructure were arrested.

In both these centers, fully computerised setups were established.  The callers, well trained in American accent English, used to call unware clients in the US through the White List data and while some used the low rate loan schemes to lure clients, the other posed as Revenue officers of the US to intimidate the people over phone through net calling software. The calling script used to run on large LCD monitors, and people were lured to pay money through linked Google Pay accounts or Credit / Debit card by either promising cheap loans or intimidating them as Revenue Officers.

The arrests made by the Hiran Magri team and Goverdhan Vilas team included people belonging to Faridabad, Noida, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Gurgaon.  Those arrested by the Hathipol Police from Panchwati included residents of Sirohi, Reodar, Delhi, Kaithal, Himmatnagar, Nagaur, Abu Road and Ahmedabad.

It is interesting to note that both centers were setup and operated by people from outside Udaipur and not a single employee belonged to Udaipur.  Which goes on to say that the city was a hub of illegal online activities for people who come from outside the city and reside here to conduct these fraudulent activities giving a bad name to the city.

Police team was formed under the supervision of Addl SP Anant Kumar, ASP Gopal Swaroop Mewara, Prem Dhandhe, Revenue Officer; Mahendra Kumar Pareekh - Revenue Officer, Udaipur; Hanuwant SIngh - SHO, Hiran Magri; Badrilal - SHO Tourism Police Station and Chenaram - SHO, Goverdhan Vilas.  The raiding team consisted of Ram Narayan, Ganesh Singh, Ram Sarup, Ram Avatar, Buddh Narayan, Rakesh Mehta, Rajendra Singh, Dinesh Singh, Dhanshyam Singh and Kailash Chandra for the raid conducted in Hiran Magri.  The raid at Panchwati was conducted by team consisting of Narulal; Raghuveer SIngh; Mohammad SAbir; Subhash Kani; Virendra Kani and Nisar Mohammad.