Mapusa councillor’s rented place used for fake call centre, held

Panaji: The crime branch of Goa police on Sunday arrested TMC candidate for assembly election 2022 and Mapusa councillor Tarak Arolkar in connection with an alleged Colvale-based fake call centre that was run from his rented premises. The group of people running the call centre was mostly targeting US nationals.
North Goa superintendent of police Nidhin Valsan said, “We have arrested Arolkar as he had given his premises on rent to run the fake call centre. The call centre was run from his premises for the past one-and-half-months and it cannot happen that he did not have any idea about it.”
Valsan said that Arolkar will have some role in the case.
Last week 33 persons were arrested in connection with the fake call centre and 26 computers and other electronic items were seized.
Crime branch registered a first information report (FIR) under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66-C and 66-D of the IT Act, among others.
Jigar Parmar, 35, a native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, along with 24 men and 8 women hatched a criminal conspiracy and set up the fake call centre at Kavish Residency, Colvale, Valsan said.
The accused impers-onated themselves as staff of Amazon Customer Service Centre and were receiving calls from Amazon custo-mers from the US, inquiring about their Amazon purchases, the SP said. The accused also made calls to random customers in the US, informing them that an unknown person had placed an order to purchase expensive electronic items by hacking into their Amazon account.
The accused would then deceitfully obtain personal details of customers, including bank details, and induce them to part with their money to resolve the issue. The customers were depositing the amount into the account of the accused to resolve issues.