Another held by Mumbai police in BPO scam to fleece US victims

The Crime Branch sleuths of the city police have arrested one more person in the bogus Andheri call centre case, wherein US nationals were duped on the pretext of cleaning up viruses from their computers. The probe revealed that every month, at least $4,000 were being deposited in the accused persons' accounts.

The arrested accused has been identified as Shadab Mehboob Shaikh, a 20-year-old resident of Mumbra, who was also working as manager in one of the two call centres busted by the police.

Speaking about his involvement in the case, a crime branch officer said, "Shaikh was working at Alfonso's call centre. About $3,000 to $4,000 would be deposited in his account."

Upon receipt of specific information on September 6, a team of officers from the Bandra Unit of the Crime Branch, headed by inspector Mahesh Desai, raided a call centre situated in Andheri.

The police found around 38 people working with computers, including illegally procured data from US nationals. They were making voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls to them. "The callers were running a tech support scam, wherein they would call up US-based victims, informing them that their computers have been infected by a virus or malware. The solution was to give them remote access to their computers, and would pretend to remove the malware of virus, and then seek money for their services. The callers said Alfonso, the owner of the call centre, would pay them a cash salary of Rs 20,000 for this," a police officer said.

During the raid, the police found another call centre — Innovation 360 — functioning in the same premises, run by one Bipin Sahu, which also had managers Taufiq Shaikh and Shadab Shaikh. The latter call center used to extract money from American nationals claiming to repair or restore their computers, said a police officer.