Police in Gwalior have cracked open a fake international call center that was running out of a single hotel room, and the interrogation of the four young men arrested in the case is turning up one startling detail after another.
A Hotel Room Turned Scam Hub
The racket was operating out of room number 6 at Hotel Jainpath, located on the Agra-Mumbai National Highway within the limits of Gwalior's Mohna police station. For the past five months, the room had quietly doubled as the base of a call center defrauding citizens of the United States. Acting on a tip-off, police raided the room and picked up four young men on the spot.
Fake Names, American Accents, Real Money
What investigators found startled even them: all four accused had studied only up to class 10 or class 12, yet they spoke fluent English in a convincing American accent. During questioning, the men admitted they had taught themselves the accent using online resources. They introduced themselves to victims under fake American identities, Frank, Louis, Bruce and Michael, never revealing their real names. Each day, the group placed more than 400 calls to people across the United States.
Behind the operation was a mastermind named Prabal Pratap Singh Parihar, who supplied the callers with ready-made scripts and personal data of American citizens. That data, police found, was sourced from the dark web. While a call was in progress, the script stayed open on a laptop screen in front of the caller, who read from it to keep the conversation convincing.
Rs 50,000 to Rs 70,000 a Day, Over a Crore in Five Months
Because of the roughly 12-hour time difference between India and the United States, the accused reportedly slept through the day and ran the call center between 9 pm and 6 am. In that window, they managed to dupe 12 to 15 people every night, mostly through the promise of gift cards or by charging bogus processing fees. On average, the gang pocketed between Rs 50,000 and Rs 70,000 a day, adding up to more than a crore rupees over five months. All of that money flowed directly into the mastermind's bank accounts. The four men who made the calls were paid a comparatively small cut, a monthly salary of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000, plus a 5 percent commission on whatever amount they managed to extract from victims.
Now an FBI Matter
Given that the racket specifically targeted American citizens, the case is likely to move beyond India's borders. Gwalior police plan to route information about the case to the FBI through India's Ministry of External Affairs. Considering how serious the case is, an FBI team could travel to Gwalior for the investigation if required. From the hotel room, police seized four laptops, seven mobile phones, four headphones, the scripts used during calls, customer details and other documents, together valued at around Rs 3.75 lakh. Investigators are now trying to establish exactly how many people in the United States fell victim to the racket.
