The Criminal Investigation Department on Tuesday busted a fake call centre operating in Guwahati which was collecting data and extorting money from US citizens.
Police said that 37 people working at the fake call centre were arrested who were collecting data of US citizens. A team of 40 CID officials on Monday night carried out the operation at four places in Guwahati at the same time.
Gujarat’s Rajesh Khan alias Rajesh Mukherjee alias Rajesh Bhai rented the second floor of Pabindra Hazarika’s house and from there he operated the fake call centre, the CID officials said. The officials also stated that they seized 28 monitors, 40 CPUs, 2 pen drives, 28 mobile phones and 1 laptop. Additional Director General of Police (CID) LR Bishnoi said that the accused got hold of database of around 67 lakh Americans.
A case (number 12/2019) has been registered at the CID police station under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document as genuine) and 384 (extortion) of the IPC and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act.
The officials said that the work would start at around 7 pm daily at the fake call centre and would go on till 5 in the morning. They would call the people and pose as American government official and say that their social security number is associated with illegal activity and extort money threatening them legal actions.
Even though the prime accused Rajesh Mukherjee was not present at the location during the raid, he was later arrested from Panbazar area of Guwahati.
Many people fell in the trap and through this activity, the Avenir Private Limited call centre was earning around Rs 50 Lakh every month.
From the arrested employees, 19 were from Shillong, 1 from Andhra Pradesh, 2 from Gujarat and 1 from Bengaluru.
