Recently, Maharashtra police has arrested over 500 call center staff including top officials after a night raid at the office on Thane’s Mira Road. Police said the raid was carried out after they received complaints of fraud by the call center. The call center staff then used these details to withdraw money from the accounts, adding that daily turnover of such dealings was estimated to be over Rs 1 crore. Even though exact details of the racket was not immediately available, police believe it had international links. The officials reportedly collected bank details of US citizens, pretending as if they were tax officials in the name of tax revision, failing which they would allegedly threaten them with dire consequences, including legal action.
Following Thane based International Call Center’s multi crore financial scam connection with new facts were coming to light and its link connecting to Ahmedabad. Mumbai Crime Branch has raided 6 Call Centers in Ahmedabad. During police investigation in Rs 500 crores financial scam Ahmedabad based mastermind Sagar Thakker and his aide Ruchit Sharma’s involvement is coming up in the case. Ruchit used run a Call Center.
In the scam, money was collected by threatening 6400 US citizens (taxpayers). Sagar and his friends had started Call Centers in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Bangalore. US investigating agencies are likely to visit Mumbai and Ahmedabad in connection with multi crore International Call Center scam. There are 500 Call Centers running in Ahmedabad at Satellite, SG Highway, Prahladnagar, CG Road and Navrangpura areas.
In the scam, Sagar was helped and guided by his sister Rima Thakker from behind the curtain. Rima used to handle financial transactions. The money extracted by threatening US citizens were brought to India using a route of Hawala transaction. Rima was in touch with Hawala operators and used to get money in India through this channels. She used to take decision of investing the money received from US.
In addition to Mumbai and Ahmedabad, they have expanded Hawala network upto Vadodara, Bhuj, Delhi and Surat. The multi crore scam was planned to extract black money from US taxpayers. As a modus operandi of Call Centers, Initially Callers used to demand upto US $ 10,000 to 20,000 which finally they were getting ready to settle down for US $ 3,000 to 5000, as per sources.
