The Anti-extortion Cell of Thane crime branch have arrested six people and have busted a fake call centre operating in Thane. The police said the accused were cheating US citizens by operating a call centre from Thane.
The police Investigation was underway to ascertain the extent of the fraud and the number of people who have been cheated, the official said.
The police said on January 31, Maloji Shinde, senior police inspector of Anti-extortion Cell of Thane crime branch received information about a fake call centre being run at Lake city centre, Kapurbawdi junction, Thane. Shinde received information that the owner and employees are cheating foreigners, mostly american nationals. "As per the information received, a raid was conducted on February 1." said a police officer.
The police during the raid arrested Kamran Ejaz Shaikh 26, a resident of Mumbra who was managing the complete call centre. The police have arrested other partners including Pankaj Jha 32, Prashant Phatak 42, Ram Nimbalkar 35, Mohammad Soheb Mohammad Mustaque Ansari 27 and Siraj Hasmi 39. "We have arrested a total of six accused including Shaikh and his five partners. Further search of the mastermind and other accused is going on," said Ashok Morale, additional commissioner of police, Thane crime branch.
The police during the raid have seized scripts, they would use to cheat the victims, mobile phones, router, register and hard disk from the computer totaling Rs 1.75 lakhs.
During the investigation the police found the accused were getting Data of US contacts from a person from Kolkata. "We are in search of the accused who was sharing the data of 10,000 contacts on a daily basis. The entire operation was monitored by a group of people from Kolkata, who had data of mobile numbers and targeted those people," said a police officer.
The police said, "After they received the data a message get sent to all the contacts using some apps. The message used to say about a process deal of 399 dollars being done by them . If the foreign national had not done the deal he can contact the customer care number given with the message. However, as the foreign national had not done any such deal they would called on the customer care number to cancel the same," said a police officer.
The officer further said the tele callers who used to get the call were sending an app asking the victim to download it to cancel the process. "If the victim downloads any of the app links, the caller used to generate a password from it. However, by using the password the telecaller used to sniff cash from the victim's bank account," added the police officer.
A case has been registered at Kapurbawdi police station under section 419, 420 and 34 of the Indian penal code and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act and Indian Telegraph Act.
Maloji Shinde, senior police inspector, AEC said, "We have not arrested any of the tele callers yet. We are in search of the accused involved in the fake call centre scam. We are also trying to contact the embassy of the country to get more details of the victims who are cheated. We suspect that the accused had cheated many such victims and are investigating to bust the complete syndicate operating from Thane, cheating foreign nationals," added shinde.
