Cyber crime: 16 arrested for duping US citizens

kolkata: Sixteen people were arrested on Wednesday night from Sector V in Salt Lake for duping USA citizens by promising to provide technical support for their computers and laptops through an illegal call centre.

Among the 16 accused persons, about six were remanded to four days police custody.

According to police, recently cops of Bidhannagar Cyber crime police station were tipped off about a call centre that is running without any registration of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT).

On Wednesday night around 9 pm, when cops conducted a raid, they found that not only the call centre was running without a valid registration, but also several USA citizens were being duped by the employees of the said call centre by promising technical support for their computers and laptops.

Sources informed that they used to call the USA citizens, using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and offer technical support. The accused persons used to claim themselves as employees of a software company. After the target was convinced, the accused persons used to connect to the computer or laptop through remote access software and put a malware so that it seems that the system has problems.

Later, they used to demand money in the form of gift cards and other means. After getting the money, the accused persons used to remove the malware to bring back the computer to its normal functioning mode.

Later the gift cards and money used to be converted into Indian currency and sent to Indian bank accounts. Police have seized around 40 computers and laptops, 16 mobile phones, four routers, 33 debit cards, two PAN cards, one money counting machine, eight cheque books, a list of targeted customers.