A day after raids were conducted on three call centres at Mira Road and 70 employees were arrested for allegedly duping US citizens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has asked the Thane polic
A day after raids were conducted on three call centres at Mira Road and 70 employees were arrested for allegedly duping US citizens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has asked the Thane police to share case details with them. The US agency has sought the case details as the officials of the call centres had been allegedly duping their citizens for the past year posing as representatives of US tax authorities. Meanwhile, the Thane rural police on Wednesday evening raided another call centre, called Met Solutions, and detained 18 employees.
Those arrested during the raids conducted on Tuesday would be produced in the court on Thursday. Besides, more than 772 employees of the call centres are also being questioned in the case.
A senior official from Thane police’s crime branch, seeking anonymity, said, “The FBI has contacted us and sought details on the case as US nationals are concerned in the case. The three call centres situated in Mira Road have their co-workers in the US, too, who provide them with data. After cheating the US nationals, these co-workers deducted 30 per cent of the payment amount and transferred the rest to the call centres in Thane via hawala from Ahmedabad.”
DCP (crime branch) Parag Manere said, “We have collected all the data and call recordings from these call centres. Their employees posed as officials from the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and blackmailed American citizens citing tax irregularities. They used to call up foreign nationals using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) saying that they owed taxes and demanding immediate payment in order to avoid legal action, such as imprisonment, their social security number getting blocked, their business/driver’s licence getting suspended etc. The fraudsters would initially demand $10,000, but would scale it down to a few hundred dollars. Interestingly, they opted for iTunes gift cards also as a mode of payment.”
Thane Commissioner, Parambir Singh said, “The call centre operators hired collegians, unemployed youth and school dropouts on a monthly salary ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 18,000.”
