The director of a 360-seater call centre that allegedly duped foreigners by posing as officials of major software companies was arrested in Salt Lake early on Thursday.
People from the call centre would allegedly send foreigners bulk emails telling them their computers were under a virus or malware attack.
Based on a tip-off, police arrested Anurag Jaiswal, a resident of Amherst Street in north Kolkata.
The Bidhannagar commissionerate had conducted a raid at the call centre operating from the Mani Casadona building on July 4. They had arrested at least 10 men who were placing calls to residents of Portugal, Germany and the Czech Republic by posing as officials of various software companies like Microsoft.
The directors of the call centre had fled during the raid, an officer said. “We have mounted electronic surveillance to track down the other directors,” he said.
The mails sent from the call centre had a hotline number and logos of major software companies. “The victims would generally call on the hotline number or share their numbers through emails, after which the callers would ask them to install a software like TeamViewer to get remote access to their computers. They then siphoned off money from their bank accounts. In some cases, they took payments through cryptocurrency and gift cards,” said the officer.
The call centre had been operational for at least five years, the officer said.