Mumbai: The Mumbai police has busted an illegal call centre operating from Kurla, from where racketeers duped Americans to the tune of lakhs of dollars by promising to sell them banned drugs and Viagra. The police on Friday arrested eight persons allegedly involved in cheating US citizens by promising to supply the drugs.

The racket was being run for the last two years, and the police suspect that the accused have cheated thousands.

Acting on a tip-off, Unit 5 of city police’s crime branch raided the call centre and arrested its manager Ekrama Mukadam (26), sales executive Arbaz Gafar Shaikh (20) and tele-callers Shahrukh Ansari (20), Junaid Shikh (22), Kadir Sayyad (20), Atif Shaikh (20), Ahad Khan (21) and Salman Khan (23), the officer said.

Dilip Sawant, deputy commissioner of police (detection), said, “After getting the tip-off we kept a close watch and gathered all the related information in which we found that the accused posed as representatives of a pharmaceutical firm and offered to sell banned drugs and Viagra.”

Mr Sawant said, “If the person showed interest, the tele-callers sought payment in dollars. The buyers would find out later that they had been cheated as they did not receive the drugs and could not contact the so-called sellers.”

The exact amount that was fleeced is yet to be ascertained, Mr Sawant said. The calls were made over the Internet, using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), he said. The police seized a laptop, and 11 hard disks.