13 held for duping people on promise of low-interest loans, mobile towers

Ghaziabad: The cyber cell on Monday night arrested 13 people, including seven women, for running a

fake call centre

in the Raj Nagar area and allegedly duping nearly 2,000 persons in the past year on the pretext of providing

loans

at low-interest rates. The group, according to police, also cheated people, promising to install

mobile towers

on their property.

Identified as Manish Kumar, Suraj Thakur, Sumit Gupta, Sonu, Shivam Kumar, Arun Kumar, Anjali, Priya, Mini Sharma, Raveena, Pallavi, Chanchal and Neetu, the accused are all from Ghaziabad. Manish, the call centre owner, had passed the Class 10 exams while Pallavi had done an MBA. The others also hold intermediate degrees, police said.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that for the loan-related fraud, they used to call their victims after getting their data from some connections working in banks, said Anand Prakash Mishra, station house officer (SHO), Kavi Nagar police station. “Once the accused gained the victims' trust, they would ask for money transfers and other documents. After receiving the money, the accused destroyed the SIM cards used to contact the victims,” he said.

In the other scam, the group, police said, targetted people by posting advertisements in newspapers, offering good returns for installing mobile towers on their property. "During interrogation, Manish told police that they targeted people in Maharashtra, Assam, UP and Bihar by giving advertisements in newspapers and social media sites. The accused would offer people lucrative returns to rent out their land for installing mobile towers and then ask for processing fees. The accused charged Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh from the victims," the SHO said.

Police have recovered 27 mobile phones, two different bank passbooks, some agreements for installing mobile towers and other documents and booked the accused under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of IPC. The accused got sent to judicial custody after appearing in front of the magistrate.