The Karnataka State Cyber Command has busted four fake call centres in Bengaluru that were allegedly cheating U.S. citizens by impersonating a prominent American accounting firm.

Acting on specific intelligence inputs, officials of the Cyber Crime Police Station (South East), along with the Special Cyber Cell, conducted co-ordinated raids at four locations across Bengaluru where the illegal call centres were operating.

According to investigators, the accused were posing as representatives of a reputed U.S.-based accounting company, and allegedly duped American citizens by offering fake tax advice, licence renewal services, and counterfeit software licence keys. The fraudsters reportedly collected huge amounts of money from victims in the guise of service charges.

Police said the call centre employees used fake identities resembling those of U.S. officials to gain the trust of victims.

During the raids, police seized 44 SSDs, two mobile phones, two laptops, nine CPUs, pre-written scripts used to communicate with victims, and several other electronic accessories allegedly used in the cyber fraud operation.

The arrested accused have been identified as Prashanth from Delhi and Akash from Uttar Pradesh.

Investigations revealed that the accused had allegedly floated a company named ‘Circle Square LLC’, and used multiple shell companies to siphon off large sums of money obtained from U.S. citizens.

Pronab Mohanty, Director General of Cyber Command, said further investigation is underway to trace the money trail, identify the bank accounts used in the fraud, and ascertain how the proceeds were transferred and liquidated.