Nine men allegedly involved in running a call centre in New Town were arrested late on Thursday on the charge of duping people.
A team from the Eco Park police station raided the call centre in an office building near the Akankha crossing, in New Town’s Action Area III, based on information that the callers were duping citizens of Europe and the US.
The callers were posing as officials of major software companies, said an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
The arrested men were allegedly making calls to foreign nationals from the call centre when the cops raided it.
“We found out the names of the call centre owners and initiated a case against them, too. We have launched a search for them,” said the officer.
The callers allegedly duped the targets by pretending to be software service providers. They would coax the victims to install software that would download spyware onto their computers and give away their banking details, the officer said.
“This gang has duped several foreign nationals. The members claimed to provide solutions to software-related problems and even offered loans through mobile applications. They had been running the call centre for the past several months,” the officer said.
“They would make voice-over IP calls using computers at the call centre. They duped victims who followed their directions and installed a mirroring software through which they could take money out of their bank accounts without their knowledge.”
The cops have started a case under IPC sections related to cheating, fraud, forgery and criminal conspiracy and sections of the IT Act.