Man held for duping US residents

A 31-year-old man was arrested from Golpark on Tuesday morning for duping residents of US after stealing their contact details from a Salt Lake based IT firm. Police said the accused Akhilesh Shaw was an employee of the IT firm in Salt Lake Indux Logix Private Limited. The firm used to provide technical support to the residents of different parts of the world on behalf of a US based company.

The accused had stolen the data of the people, who used to get technical support from his company, and established a contact with them, either over phone or via e-mail. Posing as a representative of the IT firm, he told the people that they will be getting total refund of the money that they had invested to get the technical support. He had told the people that they would get the refund as the company was closing down. He had taken details of their credit cards and bank accounts to help them get their money back. Using the details he had started withdrawing the money.

Hundreds of people were left affected and since March 2016 the IT based firm had started getting complaints of such a fraudulent act. The owner of the company, Santosh Sarraf had lodged a complaint with the police. Preliminary investigation had revealed that someone from Kolkata itself was behind the crime. So the police had initiated a search for the accused and found that the employee of the IT firm Akhilesh Shaw was the mastermind.

Police went to his residence at Panchanantala Road at Golpark and arrested him on Tuesday morning. He was booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and IT Act. He was remanded in the custody of the police for three days when produced before Bidhannagar court on Tuesday afternoon.