5 held for duping Canadian citizens posing as Amazon executives

Acting on a tip-off, Unit 10 of the crime branch raided a fake call centre at Mittal Industrial Estate in Marol, Andheri (East), on Friday night

MUMBAI: The Mumbai police crime branch has busted a fake call centre in Andheri (East) where employees were duping Canadian citizens either by threatening them by posing as law enforcement officers or by luring them to buy e-commerce gift cards, which they encashed before sending to the buyers.

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Acting on a tip-off, Unit 10 of the crime branch raided the call centre at Mittal Industrial Estate in Marol, Andheri (East), on Friday night, said a police officer who was part of the investigation.

According to the police, the call centre employees called Canadian citizens posing as representatives of e-commerce giant Amazon. They told them their Amazon account had an iPhone 16 Pro Max purchase reflecting in it and asked them to press 1 if they hadn’t made the purchase. The executives then told them they had been defrauded and were transferring the call to the Canadian Crown Attorney’s office, said the police officer. In Canada, a Crown Attorney is a lawyer who acts as a prosecutor on behalf of the government.

“When the call was transferred, another person told the receivers that he was speaking from the Canadian Crown Attorney Court House and threatened them to settle the matter by purchasing a $100 gift card. As soon as they got the 16-digit gift card number, the details were shared with the call centre owner, Shailesh Dombaria, a Dombivli resident, who used to encash it,” said the police officer.

The police have registered a cheating case and detained five people, including the call centre manager, Azhar Kadari (40), and employees Akash Kale (30), Mohammad Shahnawaz Rais Shaikh (29), Gopalsingh Deepal (25), and Mustaffa Chitalwala (31).

“We are searching for their accomplices, Sunita Pandey and owner Shailesh Dombaria,” said the police officer. All the accused used different names while speaking to the Canadian citizens and had also learnt a foreign accent, the officer added.

The accused were booked under sections 318(4) (cheating) and 319(2) (cheating by personation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.