The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested four key accused — Harshil Nayanbhai Raval, Jaswant Singh, Chetan Munjal, and Pranav Pithadia — under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in connection with a sprawling fake call centre scam that defrauded hundreds of US nationals. The arrests, made by the ED Hyderabad Zonal Office, bring the total number of persons detained in the case to seven. All four have been produced before the Special Court in Nampally, which remanded them to judicial custody.

How the Scam Operated

According to the agency, the syndicate ran organised 'calling floors' — elaborate fake call centres — staffed by employees playing three distinct roles: 'dialers' who made first contact with victims, 'bankers' who assessed a target's savings, and 'closers' who impersonated US government officers to extract money. Leads were sourced from lists of approximately 20 lakh US telephone numbers, complete with names, addresses and ages — many belonging to elderly individuals born in the 1940s — loaded onto auto-diallers hosted on servers in Germany and Finland.

Victims received fake alerts about unauthorised purchases, refunds, or computer viruses, and were then directed to call a toll-free helpline answered from India. Callers then posed as officers of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Department of the Treasury, presenting forged identity cards, badges, seizure notices and court orders. Victims were told their bank accounts were linked to drug trafficking or money laundering, threatened with arrest and the freezing of all their savings, and instructed to keep the matter secret while 'safeguarding' funds with the purported 'government'.

How Victims Were Pressured to Pay

The ED said victims were coerced through multiple payment channels: buying gold bars, handing over cash to pick-up persons, hiding currency in courier parcels, wiring funds to US-based money mule accounts, depositing cash at Bitcoin ATMs, and purchasing gift cards. Funds collected in the United States were then funnelled through companies in Dubai and Hong Kong, and routed back to India via hawala, angadia tokens, and crypto-assets including USDT. Dollars were converted at a daily rupee rate before the proceeds were invested in properties, gold, vehicles and businesses in India.

Scale of the Operation

The ED has so far identified 927 approved collections worth approximately US$ 27.39 million (about ₹261 crore) between July 2025 and September 2026. A total of 549 victims in the US have been named, and 6,463 US phone numbers were called or messaged by the syndicate. Notably, investigators found that Pranav Pithadia owned and managed the calling floors in Patiala.

Searches conducted on 15 September in Patiala, Pune, and Chandigarh uncovered three live call centres with roughly 220 persons working at the time. Forensic examination has been completed on 79 digital devices — including 65 mobile phones, 13 laptops and computers, and one data storage disk — which contained chats, ledgers, calling data, victim records and crypto wallets belonging to the syndicate.

Earlier Arrests and Ongoing Investigation

Prior to the latest round, the ED had arrested Vikas Nimar, Tarachand Nimar, and Mohd. Irfan Ansari between July and August in the same case. The investigation, which covers offences of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy, is continuing as the agency works to identify additional proceeds of crime, trace the full money trail and determine the involvement of further individuals and entities.

This case reflects a broader pattern of India-based call centre frauds targeting elderly Americans — a category of cybercrime that Indian law enforcement agencies have been pursuing with increasing cross-border coordination. With the money trail extending across the US, UAE, Hong Kong and multiple crypto corridors, the full scale of the syndicate is likely still to emerge.