9 held for duping foreign natives on pretext of tech help

kolkata: Nine persons have been arrested on Tuesday night for allegedly duping citizens of USA, Germany and Australia by promising to provide technical support for computers. Four of the accused persons have been remanded to police custody for five days.

Sources informed that the cops suspect that the fraudsters were receiving the cheated amount through hawala.

According to police, on Saturday night, cops of Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station conducted a raid at AL-31 where a call centre was running illegally. Accused persons used to send many e-mails, in technical term blast-emails, to the citizens of USA, Germany and Australia offering technical support posing as representatives of Microsoft. When people used to call on a number provided in the e-mails, the accused persons used to take access of the computer using a remote access software. After gaining access, fraudsters used to compel them to pay through different gift cards. Later, the gift cards used to get redeemed in those countries by suspected counterparts of the accused persons and a portion of the amount was being received by the owner of the call centre.

The call centre owner identified as Shabaz Ahmed Khan is a resident of Park Circus. Cops had compelled the one of arrested person to call him and ask Khan to come to Salt Lake citing something emergency. When Khan came and saw police van, he fled. While fleeing he hit a police car using his own vehicle. Police sources informed that Khan was wanted in another case of illegal call centre which was busted during 2020. Since then he is absconding.