CBI raids 4 locations in Delhi, NCR in cyber fraud case involving victims from US, recovers foreign currencies

The searches were conducted at four premises of the accused persons, identified as Harish Kumar, Amit Kumar, Rakesh Kumar Athotra and Raj Kumari, and unknown others.

The officials recovered foreign currencies of Rs 3.09 cr, 15 mobile phones and 7 laptops containing remote access application, textnow apps, fake international calling numbers, incriminating documents pertaining to US nationals, crypto investments and chats containing details of the fraud, the CBI said in a statement.

During the search, a fake tech support call center was found where the accused were allegedly involved in online-cheating of US citizens by impersonating as the tech support executives, it said.

They were allegedly receiving leads from their source and on these leads they would call potential targets in the USA via Textnow application and take control of their systems using remote access software like Any Desk on the pretext of solving issues, it added.

It was further alleged that they would then guide the targets to buy a gift card for installing/ upgrading the security software (which was never actually done) and take the card number from them. The gift card numbers taken from the targets were sent to an exclusive telegram group for cash redemption through hawala channel, it added.

A case was registered on June 10, last year against four accused and unknown others on the allegations that the accused in conspiracy with each other had fraudulently gained remote access to the digital resources of unsuspecting victims of USA and transferred the digital assets as well as crypto currencies from the wallets and accounts of the victims to their wallets.