Rs 400-cr 'net-heist' by phone operators

NEW DELHI: Call from California but pretend you’re in Chennai. If you’re smart illegal operators based in South India, you then go ahead and bill it to BSNL and MTNL, running up a tab of Rs 400 crore, all on the house.
Raids by the CBI over Wednesday and Thursday threw up two ‘engineers’ — Ashok and Suresh — who had executed this net-heist.
Indications are that many more operators in Hyderabad and Chennai were using Bharti and Reliance networks to push international calls into the BSNL and MTNL networks.
While the loss revealed by the current raid is just Rs 400 crore, the potential loss from undiscovered rackets could run into thousands of crores, CBI sources said.
Using software-based exchanges, they lifted international calls, transferred into India through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP or net telephony) and diverted them into the BSNL/MTNL network. "By using the local mobile network they disguised the international calls as ones from within India, depriving the government of access deficit charges (ADC), on them," said a senior officer. At that time, ADC was being levied at Rs 4.25 per minute. So, the loss to BSNL is estimated at over Rs 190 crore, while MTNL has been deprived of Rs 200 crore.
Five exchanges were seized in Chennai, while sleuths came across one such system at Hyderabad. The CBI found sophisticated electronic equipment connected to Internet broadband lines along with mobile handsets, fixed Wireless sets, routers, modems and other equipment. The CBI also came across 10 bank accounts with heavy transactions in foreign currency amounting to several thousand dollars. Also from Hyderabad, the agency has recovered mobile recharge coupons worth Rs 7 lakh, of which over Rs 5 lakh had been used.
Though the agency has been able to arrest Ashok alias Raj from Chennai and Suresh — both qualified engineers who were running the operations, CBI officials said they they were on the lookout for the kingpin, Rohit Malhotra, who has made himself scarce.
"His employs also do not have much idea about him and he is constantly on the run," said a CBI source, adding the name was most likely an alias.
On day one of the raids, he was reportedly at Chennai in the morning. But his calls were later tracked to Delhi around the afternoon. "He even managed to elude the CBI vigil at Chennai airport," CBI officials admitted.
Sources in the industry said telephony using VoIP was allowed only to licence holders in India. But the calls could be passed on to other networks. But in these cases, the operators were taking the calls on the VoIP from their counterpart SS Enterprises in the US and after lifting it from net were routing them into BSNL/MTNL networks through the mobile operators.