Crime branch busts illegal call centre, arrests 14, including owner
Mumbai police arrested 14 for running a fake forex call centre, duping victims by promising high returns. Main accused Amar Rovara led the operation.
MUMBAI: The Mumbai crime branch busted a bogus call centre in Malad and arrested 14 people associated with it on Friday. The people working in the call centre made phone calls to potential victims through internet claiming to be representatives of a forex trading firm from the United Kingdom (England) and dupe them after promising high returns in forex markets. The call centre has duped hundreds of people in India, the police said. It is not yet known how much amount they have duped out of people.
The main accused, Amar Rovara, 35, is a resident of Malad and had been running the call centre for one and half years. He had employed 13 people for various positions such as manager, team leader and tele callers who all earned between ₹20,000 to ₹25,000 per month, said police inspector Laxmikant Salunkhe, attached to Unit 8 of the crime branch.
Police constable Vikas More received a tip-off about an unregistered call centre located in Chincholi Bunder Road, Malad West.
The accused collected the personal information of the people from online sources by paying for it and created a database. The tele callers would then call people from the database using Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), identifying themselves as executives from VFX Markets, a forex trading firm from the United Kingdom, said a police officer.
The tele callers convinced the victims by promising guaranteed profits on investments in the forex markets and persuaded them to invest through their firm. Once they agreed, the tele callers will provide them with an application that they said was their exclusive platform for trading. The victims, or investors, could see profits earned by them. Sometimes the application displayed a loss in the trading app and forced victims to invest more to get double benefits, Salunkhe said. Based on the tip off, a police team raided the call centre and found 14 people working there, including Rovara. The police have seized two laptops, 16 desktops, two mobile phones and other related documents from the centre, the police officer said.
A case has been registered under section 316 (2)(criminal breach of trust), 316 (5)(criminal breach of trust after being entrusted with property), 319 (2)(cheating by personation), 318 (4)(cheating and dishonesty) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita; 25 (c) (intentionally damaging or tampering with telegraphs) of the Indian Telegraph Act; section 66 (c) (identity theft), 66 (d)(cheating by personation using a computer resource) of the Information Technology Act and section 3 (fraudulent default by financial establishment)of the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors in Financial Institutions Act, 1999. The accused were arrested and produced in the session court.