Dehradun: 

At least 13 youths of a cyber fraud gang were arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) and Kotwali Patel Nagar Police for allegedly cheating foreign citizens by running an illegal call centre in Uttarakhand's Dehradun, police officials said.

The accused used to target foreign citizens by claiming to be representatives of Microsoft and Apple. The accused was running a firm-- Exolent Network Solutions-- Chaman Vihar, Saharanpur Road, they said.

After this, STF was formed, and the police team raided the building located on Saharanpur Road. During the raid, the police found the accused on the spot. On questioning them, it was told that they, along with their other associates, were operating a call centre in Doon for a long time, police officials added.

According to police officials, they used to cheat the citizens of the USA and Canada by misleading them and would get money by scaring them through pop-up messages by telling them that they had watched adult movies and that there had been fraud in their bank accounts.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) STF Navneet Bhullar said when the resources recovered from the accused to run the call centre were checked technically, a lot of evidence related to running call centres and cheating foreign citizens was found in the resources.

He further said that a case was registered against the 13 accused by the Cyber ​​Crime Police Station, and a notice under section 35 has been given to all of them.

The police team has recovered a total of 13 laptops, two WiFi routers, three switches, one media converter, one extension, 10 laptop chargers, five mice, 10 headphones, four mobile phones, and other equipment from the spot.

The accused were found to have foreign numbers in missed and dialled calls, and details related to money transactions through different applications have been found on some laptops, police added.