However, behind the swanky exterior, there was a call center functioning in the garage of a legitimate agency, which had strategically crafted a ticketing website. A bunch of American travelers seeking tickets unwittingly found themselves on their meticulously designed website.
The facade continued for months until Delhi Police’s Crime Branch smelled a rat and busted them. Special commissioner (Crime) Ravindra Singh Yadav said that while four key suspects, mainly owners, have been arrested till now, 18 computers and a laptop containing voluminous amounts of data have been seized.
“Twenty supporting staff, including telecallers, IT experts, team leaders and call quality experts, have been bound down. Their roles are being investigated in detail,” Yadav added.
The arrested men were identified as Shantanu (39), Swapan (36), Virender (38) and Pankaj (37) who lived in different localities of North Delhi.
The operation was conducted by a team led by DCP (Crime) Sanjay Bhatia who acted on inputs received from informers indicating some nefarious activities allegedly going on at the tour agency. After developing the information, a team consisting of ACP Narender and inspector Sandeep conducted a raid at the premises. The cops found a call center running there with calls being made to US citizens.
“During the interrogation, the accused disclosed that one of their associates named Rohit Dass was based in the US and coordinating the operations. They had got a travel website and invested a lot of money through Google AdWords so that they got the position of display of their website on the top of Google search,” the DCP said.
Whenever a traveler inquired about the details of his travel plans from US airlines, such calls used to get diverted to their website. Then by using fake toll-free numbers, the accused allegedly tricked the victims into paying in the name of cheap air fares. The accused even used to procure their personal details. The accused further charged extra 100-200$ per traveler and this amount used to be deducted from the victims’ accounts.
The accused would later split the payment of air fare among themselves. They used to change the fake toll-free numbers whenever Google blocked the numbers.
Swapan and Virender were DU graduates, who previously worked at a call center in Gurgaon. Pankaj was a graduate from Bengaluru University. Shantanu graduated from a private university, cops say.