An Indian-American software engineer with roots in Kalyani has filed a complaint with Calcutta police against a data processing centre in Kanchrapara that allegedly used a payment gateway he had created for them to defraud scores of clients in the US.
Aryadeb Bhattacharyya, who is attached to Washington University in St Louis, said he “realised the fraud” in August 2017 after several US-based clients of Riang Infotech reported wrong billing by Sohum Gateway LLC.
On checking, the 44-year-old engineer found out that Riang Infotech had been misusing the payment gateway he had created for the company on the recommendation of a close relative back home.
According to the complaint received at the city police headquarters Lalbazar, proceeds from allegedly fraudulent transactions over the payment gateway created by Aryadeb were landing in Riang Infotech’s bank account. The account was being jointly operated by the two registered directors of the company, Sujit Acharjee and Supria Nandi Das.
The modus operandi of the accused was to store the credit card data of clients so that they could be fleeced through the gateway. Aryadeb knows of around 50 people being charged for services that Riang Infotech hadn’t provided.
“I am paying off those defrauded by the call centre from my own pocket. My credit history in the US has taken a serious beating for no fault of mine,” Aryadeb, based in the US since 1990, told Metro over the phone on Monday morning.
The two accused had cleaned out Riang Infotech’s bank account by the time it was frozen on the basis of Aryadeb’s complaint this July. It is estimated that they had illegally collected Rs 15.3 lakh through Sohum Gateway LLC.
An officer at Lalbazar said Sujit and Supria were missing since the cyber cell of city police registered a case against them under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to cheating, forgery, forgery for the purpose of cheating and criminal conspiracy.
Both had applied for anticipatory bail, first from a lower court and then Calcutta High Court. The petitions were rejected.
Metro found Sujit “unreachable” on a mobile phone number provided by Aryadeb. Supria’s phone rang but she didn’t take the call.
Riang Infotech had been allegedly preserving credit card data of all its clients for three years before starting to illegally bill them through Aryadeb’s gateway. A payment gateway facilitates e-commerce by processing financial transactions online in a matter of seconds.
Aryadeb said he started Sohum Gateway LLC in 2015 to provide payment gateway solutions to Riang Infotech Pvt Ltd without bothering to “verify their credentials”. The only information he had at the time was that it was a call centre based in Kanchrapara, North 24-Parganas, and catered to customers in the US seeking computer maintenance and support.
He flew down to Calcutta this year after complaints about alleged fraud by Riang Infotech mounted. “In some of the cases, the same client had been charged multiple times using the (stored) credit card details (and) even without providing any service,” he alleged.
Officers in Lalbazar said they would need time to complete the probe since it involved a crime committed across continents.
The Telegraph
