Cyberabad police bust scam call centre targeting Australian citizens

In Telengana, the Cyberabad police have busted an international scam call centre that allegedly targeted Australian citizens, arresting nine individuals accused of orchestrating a large-scale cyber fraud. According to a police release issued on Saturday, the racket was run by cousins Praveen and Prakash from Telangana’s Khammam district, who set up the fake call centre in 2024 and brought in recruits from Kolkata to carry out the operation.
According to information, investigators found that the fraudsters made deceptive phone calls to Australian nationals, tricking them into transferring substantial sums of money from their bank accounts to various Australian accounts held by Indian nationals residing there. The illegally obtained funds were then funnelled back to India through hawala networks, cryptocurrency channels and other covert routes. Police estimate that over the past two years, the group siphoned off and repatriated between Rs 8–10 crore from unsuspecting victims.The accused reportedly hired seven people from Kolkata, housed them in Madhapur and trained them to pose as technical support executives. The wider investigation uncovered that an unidentified group supplied the call centre with “leads” by sending fake pop-ups and phishing emails to Australian citizens, warning them that their computers had been compromised. These messages included a bogus “customer care” number, and when victims dialled it, the calls were redirected to the Madhapur-based centre.
Once connected, the fraudsters persuaded victims to grant remote access to their computers, enabling them to break into online banking accounts and transfer large sums into Australian bank accounts belonging to Indian nationals. The call centre operators had also collected bank account details from Indian students living in Australia, using these accounts to receive the proceeds before routing the money to India through underground channels.Two more individuals from Khammam were involved in managing the call centre’s daily activities. While nine accused have been taken into custody, police said efforts are underway to nab the remaining members of the cybercrime network.