Two bogus call centres busted in Jaipur, 23 held
JAIPUR: The city police commissioner’s special team (CST), along with the local police, on Tuesday raided two call centres in Jaipur and arrested 23 people who were who were allegedly cheating people in the USA, Europe, Canada and other countries of crores of rupees posing as tax officials.
Jaipur city commissioner of police (CP) Anand Shrivastava said that from the possession of the accused four luxury vehicles, 25 computers, three laptops, one internet server, one television and 24 mobile phones were recovered.
“The CST team received an input that there are fake call centre operational across city that are duping foreign nationals by posing them as tax officials, bank employees of loan department and would dupe them of crores. The accused would collect money through bitcoins or cheques. To verify the input, team started collecting information about them,” said Shrivatsava.
Additional commissioner of police (addl CP) Ashok Gupta said that after verifying the information, CST teams along with Shyam Nagar police station team and Shipra Path police station team raided two call centres.
“One raid was conducted at a house in Rani Sati Nagar falling under Shyam Nagar police station and another raid was conducted at Shipra Path on intervening night of Monday and Tuesday,” Gupta told.
The addl CP added that the raid continued till Tuesday morning and 16 were arrested on charges of cheating and forgery from Shyam Nagar and seven were arrested from Shipra Path.
Explaining the modus operandi of the gang, the additional deputy commissioner of police (addl DCP), CST, Vimal Singh said that the kingpin of the call center in Shyam Nagar were Karan Singh Shekhawat and Kunal Sharma.
“The duo got the data of foreign nationals from Yellow Pages, a telephone directory of businessmen. Then they would call the probable targets and would offer them loan at lower interest. Once the victim shows interest then they would ask them to deposit money in the name of formal ties through various e-payment gateways,” said Singh.
The addl DCP said that the gang which operated call center in Shipra Path would call the targets through an software.
“The accused in Shipra Path would collect phone numbers and data of various foreigners through websites and would call them through a software’s via internet calling. Through the software, the accused created a number of America so that the victim thinks that it’s an call from America only,” added Singh.
The officer further told that the accused would call the foreigner posing as tax officials or from a finance company. Either, they would threat them of posing penalty or would offer them loan at lower interests. In the name of formalities the accused would get money transferred in their account.
Further investigation is on. The accused arrested from Shyam Nagar have been identified as Karan Singh Shekhawat (24), Kunal Sharma (25), Mohaamad Shoaib Patel, Alpesh Nadha (28), Dheeraj Gupta (27), Mohammad Sajid (22), Lal Ram (24), Meet Bhatt (25), Lokendra Singh (19), Rahul Khan (19), Khushvant Soni (28), Himanshu Soni (23), Narendra Purohit (24), Ravindra Dwiwedi (31), Shubhanshu Pratap Singh (18) and Anoop Yadav (21).
All are natives of Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
Similarly, from Shipra Path, Shahnawaz Ahmed alias David Morrison (37), Jitendra Mishra (38), Anu Kanjumon (33), Pukit Bhatia (21), Ashish Upreti (36), Mohammad Haider (21) and Mukhtar Ansari (22).