Another racket where Indian nationals were posing as American tax officials and duping citizens of the United States of America was busted on Thursday.

A joint team from the Dindoshi and Goregaon police stations raided a fake call centre in the Sejal Park complex in Goregaon and arrested five people. They also seized 15 computers, hard disks, routers and mobile phones from the premises.

Posing as tax officers

“There were a total of 15 people in the call centre, who were posing as tax officers and calling up U.S. nationals, telling them to clear their tax liabilities. The accused had trained the employees to perfect American accents and had provided a script to refer to while making the calls,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone XI) Sangramsinh Nishandar said.

Source in Hyderabad

According to inquiries so far, they had purchased the personal details of their targets from a source based in Hyderabad, and the police are now looking for this source, he said.

“The accused would convince their victims to send the money to the account of their accomplice based in the U.S., who would take a 50% cut and send the rest of it to their accounts in Indian currency. The racket has been running for the last one-and-a-half months. The call centre used to run round the clock and the accused have called thousands of U.S. nationals so far. We are still investigating to ascertain the exact scope of the racket in terms of money, but we believe this is a multi-crore rupee scam,” Mr. Nishandar said.