Kolkata: The Cyber Crime Wing, West Bengal has busted an illegal international call centre operating from the first floor of a building on Dakshindari Road under Lake Town Police Station. The raid led to the arrest of 21 individuals, including four women.
The call centre, identified as Ostenix Solutions, was allegedly run by Samir Khan.
The accused posed as representatives of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) and targeted Australian citizens.
They convinced victims that their copper wire-based internet connections required an urgent upgrade to optical fibre to prevent service disruption. Under this pretext, the fraudsters tricked them into providing bank credentials and remote access to their computers. To execute the scam, the call centre used Eye-Beam software, which functioned as a virtual mobile phone, and made calls using foreign IP addresses from France and Finland. Victims were asked to make payments for the supposed upgrade, but no service was provided. Acting on a tip-off, police raided the premises on March 24, seizing 29 computers, two laptops, 23 mobile phones, three pen drives, two routers, two switches, one hard disk and crucial data records. Attendance registers indicated that the operation had been running since 2022.
A suo motu complaint has been registered at Lake Town Police Station. Four of the accused have been taken into custody for further interrogation.