Nuh’s hilltop ‘call centres’ emerge as epicentres of fraud

Aamir Khan (22) works at a call centre, earns a salary that is in five figures, and spends his time dialling numbers from a list provided to him by his team leader, talking to clients and customers, convincing them, like call centre agents sometimes do, to click a link to close the deal.

Neither Khan nor his work is unique in the city that is India’s call centre capital.

Only, Khan’s office is like no other call centre’s, although it does have a view.

Khan sits on a hillock in the Aravalli range in Nuh, 98km from Gurugram (there are others like him on the same hillock and on surrounding ones) making calls to prospective “clients” and instead of a “team leader” listening to their calls for “quality purposes”, there is a handler who sits somewhere close by.

The handlers or team leaders have three roles: they assign work to the callers on their teams (usually by the nature of fraud); keep track of the money involved; and step in to handle glitches.

Khan is a cog at the core of what has emerged Nuh’s major industry, cyber frauds, with police estimating that there are around 500 groups, each of up to 10 people, who are involved in the racket. Nuh is the heart of a countrywide racket that targets people who transact business (of any sort) online -- and these days that includes just about anybody. Here, school dropouts sweet talk people into clicking on links.

On the day HT meets Khan, he is an Indian Army officer who is targeting a man who has put his car up for sale on a shopping site. Khan, who usually speaks in the Meo dialect, is speaking perfectly pronounced Hindi words, and peppering the conversation with some English words to make the script as convincing as it gets.

“Namaskar sir mai Rajesh Kumar bol raha hun. Main Indian Army me kaam karta hun aur Srinagar mein posted hun (Hello sir, I am Rajesh Kumar. I am in the Indian Army, posted in Srinagar). Maine apka advertisement dekha, mai yeh car lena chahta hun (I saw your ad on OLX. I want to buy your car. I will immediately pay the amount). Mai aapko link bhej raha hun, aap click karoge to aapko payment receive ho jaygi. Pahle ek chhota amount transfer hoga taki aap check kar sako, phir full payment bhejunga (I am sending you a link, please click on it to first receive a token amount. Once you are assured, I will send another link for the full payment of ₹50,000).

The first link is clicked, and a token amount of ₹5 is received by the “target”. Then, another link is sent, which is again clicked immediately, but this time the person on the other end loses ₹50,000 from his account. This is the most basic of all frauds -- but it works. By the time, the target realises that he has been duped, Khan has switched off his phone, picked up another one with a different SIM, and is on to his next call, his next target.

Khan is the spear-end of an operation that believes in specialisation; there are people whose job is to secure SIM cards; others who get phones; and still others who get financial and personal data of potential marks. And there are those that manage the operation’s own finances, using UPI, moving money across accounts.

Cyber fraud is a full-time six-hours-a-day job for thousands of fraudsters who operate from 14 villages in Nuh, whose police department in February launched a crackdown in 40 villages after analysing data that pointed to at least 14,000 suspicious mobile phone numbers active around these villages and in the Aravalli forests. The police said the department of telecommunications of DoT has since helped deactivate these.

But the 14,000 number worried the police. Varun Singla, superintendent of police, Nuh, said that they started identifying bank accounts linked to these numbers and have found that at least 30,000 bank accounts are being used to transfer money after fleecing victims.

The highest number of cybercrimes in the country over the last three years originated from Bharatpur district in Rajasthan, showed data obtained from the Union home ministry. The numbers indicate that the Mewat region, comprising Bharatpur and Alwar in Rajasthan, Mathura district in UP and Nuh in Haryana, has replaced Jamtara in Jharkhand as India’s newest hub for cybercriminals.

Police said the villages where a majority of cyber fraud cases originated were Nai (where Khan is based), Tirwara , Bicchor, Singar, Jaimat, Gangadbas, Piproli, Khedla, Lohingakalan, Jakhopur, Aminabad, Bisru, Dudholi, and Tuseni. There are 434 villages in the district, police said. Most of the villages are located in the foothills of the Aravallis and serve as perfect spots to make fraudulent calls from, police added.

The police said several cons use cellphone apps to create fake emails to appear as if they were sent by telecom providers, banks or social media sites. Once a user clicks on a link provided in the email, they are then drawn in to the fraud.

The training and the trainers

Rajasthan’s Kota, popular for its hundreds of coaching centres that train thousands of students every year to take engineering and medical examinations, is less than 100km from Nuh. Here hundreds of boys and young men, some as young as 14, but none older than 30, are trained in cyber fraud. The interesting thing is that few of them are untrained garden-variety frauds; most are well trained professionals who learn the ropes from the best in the business — for a fee, of course.

Training and trainers are at the core of the racket. HT’s reporting indicates that trainees typically pay between ₹25,000 and ₹1 lakh for the training. The trainers don’t use smartboards or PPT presentations; they use printouts and a normal blackboard to teach skills. How to identify a mark? How to make a call? What to say? How to earn the target’s trust? How to make them click on the link? Some training programmes are rough-and-ready and last just a day; others go on for a month.

It’s serious business. A trained con artist such as Khan could make ₹45,000 a day.

Ummar Mohammad (23) claims to have duped at least 500 people in the past year, mostly businessmen wanting to sell something. He poses as an Indian Army officer. He said this is one of the easiest ways to dupe people as they trust the Indian Army. “I have never been to school; my brothers have been in this trade for several years. We have built a house, bought agricultural land and motorbikes with this money. We spend on food, gadgets and clothing. We don’t know anything else other than talking to people and duping them.”

Azzaruddin Khan (24), identified by police as a trainer, said he learnt the trade eight years ago, and confesses to being a compulsive con artist. It’s almost as if something inside him wakes up every time he makes a call.

“Many times, when I call my relatives, I end up asking them to get their KYC done and send them links (through which I defraud them). A few times I have duped these people unintentionally and have realised it only after they told me that money was debited from their bank account after they clicked on the link.”

Identifying marks and getting their numbers is easy, the fraudsters say. There are people who sell databases of insurance companies, banks, wallet companies.

It’s all done very professionally. So professionally, in fact, that sometimes the trainers are those from large and well-known call centres. One such, who asked not to be named, claimed to have 25 years of experience and admitted to training fraudsters in Nuh and Bharatpur (in Rajasthan, another hub of online rackets) for the past three years. Master trainers such as this man hold classes in villages, and train aspiring fraudsters in several kinds of cyber fraud.

The fraudsters invest in the latest software of voice modulation and voice accent programmes. A month’s training is usually followed by another month (perhaps more) for practice in using these programmes. People practise for hours at a stretch (again in the hillocks). Team leaders even prepare special training modules that are circulated on YouTube to members. The suspects practise on a few modules and make changes in their pitch on the basis of feedback from the trainers.

Like all trainers, the person cited above takes pride in his trainees. “I have trained over 2,000 people in these areas and the potential I have seen in them is phenomenal. Despite no education they learn the tactics and practice. They are very sincere and hardworking; they practice for more than 10 hours a day.”

Infrastructure and ecosystem

The fraudsters work in teams of around 10 people. The responsibilities are clear: there are the callers; there are those who withdraw money from the bank accounts into which they have been deposited by the marks; there are those who arrange SIM cards and phones; there are those who open bank accounts and access databases for identifying targets. The police say all frauds are committed by such groups; they add that there are around 500 teams who work in close coordination and have spread their wings in other districts of Haryana -- Faridabad, Palwal, and Rewari.

The work itself happens in the hills of the Aravalli range on the outskirts of villages. The choice of location is based on several factors: connectivity (needs to be good); remoteness; and forests and fields around to facilitate a quick exit should the police come visiting.

The teams include young men on motorbikes who patrol the area.

The only investments the gangs make are in phones. The business, the fraudsters claim, is profitable from Day 1.

Sahil Khan (21), a school dropout, said that his friends and their family members are in the business, and that it was only natural that he join them. “Initially my job was to patrol the area but later I requested to join the core group making calls. I went to Rajasthan for training sessions and started making calls within one month. It’s so easy and so lucrative. I work hardly six hours a day and make at least ₹6 lakh a month.”

Like any professionally run workplace, the teams meet once a month. Details of success stories are shared; and top performers are felicitated. The star of the month is invited to speak. Leaders and trainers ask team members to articulate their dreams, put them down in print, and read them at least 100 times a day.

Anwar Hussain (34), who was felicitated six times in 2022, said it’s the dream of every fraudster to stand on the stage and share his experience. “We travel frequently and are very satisfied with our life and work. Even if we are arrested, we are soon out on bail,” he said.

Felicitation ceremonies vary in scale and location. Banquet halls, ubiquitous in this part of the country, were once popular but the police got wind of this. Now, events are held in the workplace itself (on the hillocks), although sometimes the gangs get together and do things in style. Hussain says the latest big event was in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. It was attended by 900 people, and some ₹25 lakh was given out in awards.

Rakshit Tandon, cyber expert, said that to address these kind of frauds, “we need to strengthen two pillars of digital ecosystem: Telecom (issuing SiM cards and internet access) and banking (bank accounts and wallets need stronger policies). Citizen awareness programs at large are needed to make people what social engineering techniques such frauds use.” He added that stronger laws too are needed to create a harsher deterrence.

The larger conspiracy

The police believe an operation of this nature and size is very likely to have links with other gangs in the state. The Nuh police launched a search operation at suspected hideouts of 12 most wanted criminals on Saturday. The police said simultaneous raids were conducted at residential and other premises linked to the criminals, adding that the entire operation was aimed at disrupting the nexus between gangsters and criminals, cow smugglers and drug traffickers operating from Nuh.

Police said the suspects evaded arrest, but that the teams seized important documents from their houses. “More than 300 suspected hideouts of anti-social elements were raided during the operation carried out by at least 200 policemen,” Singla said.

The police officer explained that the entire operation was planned after the interrogation of several people with links to recently busted cyberfraud modules . On April 28, over 125 suspects, allegedly involved in financial fraud were arrested following simultaneous raids at 300 locations across 14 villages of Nuh. The raids were carried out by over 5,000 police personnel during an overnight operation to crack down on cybercrime.

Police personnel were called in from at least 10 districts, including Gurugram, Faridabad, Bhiwani, Hisar, Panchkula, Rohtak, Sirsa, Jind, Ambala and Dari. But manpower alone may not suffice to break the back of what has effectively become a multi-crore rupee industry. That would require financial literacy among the marks and the fear of the law among the fraudsters.

Right now, both are lacking and people such as Khan are the beneficiaries.