Hyderabad: Fake Amazon Prime call centre busted, 13 held

Hyderabad: The Special Operations Team (SOT) of Cyberabad has busted an international fake call centre in the Petbasheerbad police limits and arrested 13 individuals for cheating people in Australia by posing as tech support staff of Amazon Prime.

According to the police, the accused would call potential targets in Australia and offer technical support by claiming that their Amazon Prime account had been hacked or was facing a security threat. The accused used illegal techniques and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls to deceive the victims. They would make the victims pay a specified amount through gift cards that were later redeemed at Australian bank accounts by the overseas contacts of the accused.

The call centre had a total of 13 individuals who impersonated tech support staff of Amazon Prime while engaging in calls with foreign nationals. The police recovered 13 desktop monitors, 14 CPUs, 13 headsets, one hard disk, one pen drive, one memory card, eight new SIM cards, and 18 mobile phones from the accused. Additionally, internet routers, telecommunication software, and incriminating data from the computers and mobile phones were also seized.

The arrested individuals include Rabesh Kumar Prasad alias Rahul, Manager of the call center and a native of Mukundapur, Sarbesh Kumar Gupta alias Amen, Bairic Pramod Reddy alias Pramod, and others.

The arrests were made under the supervision of G. Sundeep, Dy. Commissioner of Police, Medchal Zone, M.A. Rasheed, Dy. Commissioner of Police, SOT Cyberabad, and P. Shobhan Kumar, Additional DCP of SOT, Medchal Zone, Cyberabad.