19 held for running fake call centre

KOLKATA: The police have arrested 19 youths in the past one week for allegedly running a fake call centre and cheating Australian citizens by promising to provide technical support.

Kolkata Police had been receiving complaints from several Australian citizens that they were being duped by unknown tele-callers on the pretext of offering technical support. The callers used some sort of trick to install malwares in the computers and demanded huge money to restore the systems.

During the probe, police tracked down a few youths by locating their mobile Internet Protocol (IP) addresses which were provided by some of the Australian citizens. On June 25, cops conducted a raid and nabbed four persons from Tiljala, Bowbazar and Park Street area. After interrogating them, another accused was nabbed from Garden Reach on June 29.

During the interrogation of the fifth accused, cops came to know that the illegal call centre was being run from Sector V in Salt Lake. Late on Thursday night, cops conducted a raid at the call centre and arrested 14 accused.

Cops learnt some of them were involved in the clash between two groups of criminals that had taken place in Ekbalpur a few days back.