Cross-continent cyber-crime racket busted, 3 apprehended

Kolkata: A cross-continent cyber-crime racket was busted by Kolkata Police and three persons were apprehended in this connection.

The racket operated in the garb of a call centre at Salt Lake Sector V.

Interestingly, the investigation of the case was taken up on the basis of a complaint by a Belgian resident, Eric Stockman on May 29, via an email to the Commissioner of Police, Kolkata Rajeev Kumar .

"It was a cyber-crime racket operating across three continents that has duped victims across the US, Belgium, Germany and Canada. The Anti-Rowdy Section of the detective department and officials of Cyber-Crime Police station joined hands to bust the racket," a senior official of KP's Detective Deparment said.

According to the complaint, the arrested persons had introduced themselves as employees of Microsoft Corporation and warned him that a dangerous computer virus had been used to hack his computer to get access to his details and personal information through a Microsoft installed software.

They even warned him that this might lead to a big financial loss for the complainant as his accounts might be hacked in no time, or worse, he might get entangled in a net of dubious activities unknowingly.

The caller claimed that he was ready to help him protect his computer details from the hackers. Convinced by the professional approach of the caller, he fell prey to the hackers.

He was asked to pay a certain amount for the professional help and was given an account number and in the name of online support, his computer data was taken over virtually with the help of a software called 'Team Viewer.'

The dubious Microsoft team cleaned 309 Euro (amounting to Rs 25,000) from his bank account.

The sleuths tracked the IP address of the phone calls and realised that their source was in Kolkata.

Accordingly, a raid was conducted at a fake call centre at Sector V and its owner Vikash Pandey along with his two tele-callers Abhijit Sharma and Amir Sohail were apprehended. After prolonged interrogation, they admitted that they had duped people across the continents.

"We have also recovered a laptop, four hard disks, a mobile phone and many important documents that will probably lead us to even more such fraud transactions," a senior official said.