Mastermind of call centre fraud may have used it to receive proceeds of extorted money.
Mastermind of call centre fraud may have used it to receive proceeds of extorted money.
As part of its probe into the call-centre scam wherein employees of eight such units allegedly extorted US nationals in the name of their tax and immigration authorities, the Thane police has stumbled upon a foreign bank as part of its efforts to track the money-trail. The police is also trying to crack the coded vocabulary used by the scam’s masterminds, which they recovered from some of the main accused arrested in the case so far.
The probe showed that the scam’s key alleged mastermind, Shahagir Thakkar (23) alias ‘Shaggy’, who is absconding, had used the foreign bank to receive proceeds of the money extorted in the US from its nationals through Indian merchants. A senior Thane police officer said, “We are in the process of gathering evidence to establish the role of a foreign bank through which the scam’s victims, who are US nationals, had sent money to a few merchants in Ahmedabad that eventually got transferred to Shahagir Thakkar and Reema. The scam’s US-based orchestrator kept 30% for himself or herself, while the rest, that is 70%, was sent to Shaggy via the foreign bank.” The officer said, “The money, which was a result of extortion and fraud, was then re-distributed by Shahagir and Reema among the involved call centres and partners.”
Another case investigator said, “During the interrogation of some of the main accused persons in the scam, the police came to know that Shaggy, his partners and Ahmedabad-based merchants had used coded language while transmitting money or sharing business information.” He said, “We are trying to crack the code so we will reach the key way through which they were doing some important transactions.”
The officer said, “We came across some people and interrogated them, when we came to know that these people actually worked to transfer the money from merchants to Reema or some third party. But they didn’t even know for what reason they were exchanging bags from one place to another.” He said, “Shaggy or Reema used to choose needy people who wanted money urgently and then they or through some other person asked them to transfer the bags from one person to another but they didn’t take the help of the same person again. So the person didn’t have an idea for who he/she had transferred the bags. ”
After this, the money in India used to reach all the call centres concerned via angadias (traditional couriers) from Ahmedabad. An Ahmedabad-based angadia confirmed that Reema, used to come by with money every fortnight and had the cash sent to Mira Road in Thane. Reema used to send Rs 70 to Rs 90 lakh via angadias to each call centre, the angadia said, adding that the directors of the Mira Road call centre used to visit a Bhuleshwar-based angadia to get hold of their parcel.
The Thane police arrested a 33-year-old, identified as Jagdish Kanani, said to be one of the investors in fraud call centre scam, on Sunday. He allegedly has two fake call centres in Malad and one in Miraroad. He has been running these call centres from 2012, sources said. But the police still could not get any information about his connection with Shaggy Thakkar, the alleged mastermind of the fake call centres. Thane police commissioner Parambir Singh said, “ He is not a mentor of Shaggy, nor is he a key accused. We have arrested him for running fake call centre in Mumbai and further investigation is going on.” He was granted police custody till October 20.
