31 arrested from Noida building for cheating US citizens with tax threats

NOIDA: Altogether 31 people were arrested from a building in Noida Sector 63 on Thursday for allegedly running a fake call centre that cheated thousands of Americans on the pretext of collecting tax.

The raid on the building in G Block came days after officers from Interpol and Canadian police met Noida police chief Ajay Pal Sharma and discussed with him rising cases of foreigners getting cheated by illegal call centres in Noida.

Police said on Thursday more such sham call centres were running across the city and they hoped to bust them soon.

“We will be conducting more such raids in the days to come. We will also take help from experts and prepare a fresh set of guidelines for call centre operators,” an officer said.

Police said most of the 31 people who were arrested on Thursday were from northeastern states, such as Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Meghalaya. The gang was being run by two youths from Gujarat — Abhishek and Rajender — who allegedly ran such fake call centres in the western state too.

“Both Abhishek and Rajender belong to Ahmedabad. They were the mastermind behind the fake centre,” a police officer said.

During the raid, the cops stumbled upon a data bank that contained contact details of thousands of American citizens. The details were in an Excel sheet on a desktop in the building.

Police said the accused would call up US citizens and speak to them in an American accent. They would then threaten them with penalty if they defaulted in paying taxes. The accused would provide the victims with account numbers and ask them to deposit the amounts. They would then go incommunicado.

“The miscreants called up American people and spoke to them in their accent. They identified themselves as officials from the tax department and asked them to deposit specific amounts if they wanted to evade penalty. The accused would switch off the phones used to make the calls after they got the money,” the officer said.

According to the officer, many of those arrested on Thursday had earlier worked in sham call centres in Gujarat and learnt the trick there. Sources said some of them had been arrested earlier too. The Noida call centre that was raided on Thursday was being run for the past three months, sources said.

Police on Thursday recovered several laptops, 34 computer sets, routers, mobile phones and other IT equipment used in the sham operation. The accused were booked under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and provisions of the IT Act.

Thursday’s was the fifth fake call centre to have been busted in the past 20 days of this month. On October 5, three persons were arrested for allegedly targeting unemployed youths who uploaded their resume on job search websites. The accused allegedly sent them fake offer letters and charged them a fee of Rs 5,000-15,000 after promising a job.

In the second case, eleven members of a Greater Noida gang were arrested by the cyber crime cell on October 10 for alleging cheating Army veterans across Delhi-NCR with the ruse of insurance policies. On October 18, one person was nabbed for allegedly cheating hundreds of Canadians and citizens of other countries from Sector 63. On October 22, four persons were arrested for running an illegal call centre in Sector 16.