7 held by Cyber Crime Cell for duping Americans

Kolkata: Seven persons have been arrested by Cyber Crime Cell of Kolkata Police for allegedly cheating American citizens by promising technical support online.

According to police, on Wednesday, a person identified as Bhupinder Singh Bindra approached senior police officials of Kolkata Police and introduced himself as the lawyer of Microsoft Corporation in India.

He told police officials that Microsoft has got several complaints from American citizens that they have been duped by promising technical support. While inquiring about the matter, Microsoft authorities found that the accused persons in Kolkata were operating the racket. Bindra lodged two complaints against unknown accused persons. After commencing the probes, the police came to know about two companies identified as 'Wizard E Marketing Private Limited' and 'Vision Call Services Private Limited'.

The police first raided the office of 'Wizard E Marketing Private Limited' located on Topsia Road and found an illegal call centre was running there. At the time of raid, the office was running in full swing and the callers were found posing as engineers of Microsoft Corporation and were offering technical support.

From there the police detained three persons, including Owner and Director of the call centre. From the office, the police seized six hard disks, pen drives and several incriminating documents.

Following the raid at Topsia, another team from Cyber Crime Cell raided another call centre identified as 'Vision Call Services Private Limited' located at 50, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road.

The police found that the same kind of fraudulent operations were going on there. From there police detained four persons. During the search, the police seized a Macbook, a laptop, four hard disks, two mobile phones, ATM cum debit card and several incriminating documents. Later, the detained persons were arrested.

Sources informed that accused persons used to call American citizens and identify themselves as engineers of Microsoft Corporation. They used to tell the victims that their computers had some problem and may crash at any moment.

After convincing them, accused persons used to take over the control of the computers using remote access software and install malware. As soon as the malware was installed the computers got locked. Then the accused persons used to demand money to unlock the computers.

Earlier, approximately two years ago, Bidhannagar Police has busted such cheating rackets running in Salt Lake and Sector V. In some of the call centres, using remote access software, to gain access to the victim's computers and used same kind of technique to cheat.