Eleven men have been arrested on Wednesday for allegedly being part of a call centre in Salt Lake’s Sector V in northeast Kolkata that used to target people in Spain and the US by impersonating support staff of an e-commerce giant.
Police said the call centre named “We Care Solutions Private Limited” was operating from the ninth floor of a building in Sector V.
“We raided the office on Wednesday based on a tip-off and found a group making fraudulent calls to people abroad with an intention to cheat them by taking control of their phones and laptops,” said an officer of the Bidhannagar cyber police station.
Two men — Sumit Majhi and Hafijur Rahaman Sardar — were running the office as its “directors”, the police said.
“The employees would call people in Spain and the US posing as representatives of a software company and an e-commerce giant,” a senior officer said.
“They would ask their targets to download an app on their devices and then ask them to share a passcode, which gave the callers access to their phone or laptop.”
The alleged fraudsters could not produce any document of agreement with the landlord of the 1,200sqft office.
“This means they were not even official tenants of the space. They could not show any documents for the registration of the company they were running from the ninth floor,” said an investigator.
Eleven men, including the two directors, were arrested for alleged cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and common intention.
The police said the accused are from Sonarpur, Baguiati, Nodalhali, Howrah, Chitpore and Amherst Street.
This is not the first time that a group in Kolkata has been found to be allegedly cheating people living abroad.
Recently, acting on a complaint through FBI in the US, Kolkata police arrested a group of four men who had allegedly cheated at least four elderly US citizens by posing as support staff of an anti-virus software company.
The group had allegedly sent the victims phishing emails asking them to renew their anti-virus software. One of the three victims — a 76-year-old woman — recently recorded her statement before a magistrate in Alipore court through video conferencing.
Bike skids
A 53-year-old motorcyclist was injured after the two-wheeler skidded on the Vidyasagar Setu on Wednesday evening.
Police said Noor Islam, a resident of Howrah, has been admitted to SSKM Hospital with multiple injuries.
ATM break-in bid
A group of men attempted to break open an unguarded ATM of a private bank in Laskarhati in New Town early on Thursday.
Police said the group could not break into the chest of notes but damaged the box, leaving the machine inoperative. A probe has been started,the police said.