Three men who were allegedly running a fraudulent call centre inside an abandoned building that lacked any electric connection to allegedly dupe people based in the United Kingdom by offering them “loft insulation” services were arrested on Monday night.
Police said the building from whose second floor the three men were operating the call centre neither had electricity nor WiFi connection. The building is located in a relatively remote pocket of Rajarhat.
“They switched on their mobile phone hotspots to connect to laptops so they could make VoIP calls. They were calling prospective clients pretending to be employees of a company named Novotech IT Solutions Pvt Ltd that provided home insulation services,” said an officer of Bidhannagar police.
A senior police officer said many living in the UK insulate their homes to keep the interiors warm during winters.
“At least one of the accused men has a background of working in a fraudulent call centre and had been arrested before. He was out on bail at present. He knows the technique of how a call centre works. He roped in the other two from his neighbourhood and started operating even without a proper set-up,” said the officer.
When cops raided the place, they found a table on which two laptops were kept, a wooden bench and a bulk of bricks on which one of the men would sit.
The police identified the accused trio as Abhay Sharma and Vivek Kumar Sharma, from Lake Town, and Raj Mitra from Rajarhat. Officers said they have seized three mobile phones, two laptops, a table and a bench.
The three men who had allegedly been spotted entering the abandoned building every night over the past few weeks had prompted some of the neighbours to report the matter to the police. The neighbours, however, did not know about their activities inside the building.