A dozen men were arrested from Ekbalpore in southwest Kolkata late on Thursday night for allegedly running an illegal call centre.
Officers from the detective department of Kolkata police said the centre did not have the necessary permission from the telecom authorities and that its callers were duping clients.
“We had received a complaint of cheating and criminal conspiracy from a person. The complaint was lodged with the cyber police station in Lalbazar. Subsequently, the detective department took over the probe,” said a senior police officer at Lalbazar.
On Thursday night, the police said they seized three hard disks, several data sheets and one router from the house that used to be the work station for the accused callers.
Senior officers said most of these fake call centres would operate by engaging youths, who would pose as representatives of major companies.
“The callers had accessed the customer databases of different countries, including the US, the UK and Australia, and would call them up randomly,” the officer said.
“We are yet to assess the exact extent of the cheating that these 12 youths have carried out over the last few months when they had set up the centre.”
The callers would allegedly first provide a link to the customers and then ensure that a spyware was sent that had a link inside.
Once the customer clicked on the link the spyware got installed either in the customer's mobile phone or laptop.
“This spyware would help accessing the net banking details of the customer. Sometimes one needs a lot of convincing over a long period of time to influence a customer to agree to clicking on the link,” the officer said.