A team of 10 that was running a call centre and allegedly duping people in Germany, the US, Portugal and the Czech Republic posing as representatives of Microsoft has been arrested in their New Town office.
Police said the office at Mani Casadona in New Town has space for 360 people to work simultaneously at their workstations to make calls, indicating the gang could be larger than what the cops came across during a raid on Tuesday morning.
“They used to pose as members of the tech-support team of Microsoft and would induce people to click on a link through their website that would help them gain access to the victims’ phones or laptops,” said an officer of Bidhannagar police.
The police said they raided the office based on specific information about the fraudulent call centre and found 10 persons. “It is apparent that many more persons are engaged in making fraudulent calls. We are trying to identify them," said the officer.
Senior officers said once fraudsters get access to the devices used by victims, they ask the victims to carry out a small transaction that would not raise any alarm.
“The fraudsters would notice banking details the victims use while making transactions and later use them to transfer huge sums of money without the knowledge or consent of the victim,” said the officer.
Several call centres allegedly engaged in duping people abroad have been unearthed across the city in the past few months.
The police said that in the majority of the cases they find that the accused who ran the centres felt the cops would not be able to catch them as their victims are thousands of kilometres away.