Rajodi beach fake call centre mastermind arrested in Delhi

Naveen Bhutani, alleged mastermind behind a fake call centre targeting Australians, was arrested in Delhi after a two-month-long operation.

Naveen Bhutani, the alleged mastermind behind the fake call centre that was operating out of a farmhouse near Rajodi beach in Virar, was arrested in Delhi on Tuesday, after more than a two-month-long interstate operation involving multiple police teams.

Rajodi beach fake call centre mastermind arrested in Delhi

The call centre, whose primary targets were Australian nationals, was busted in April after the Arnala police received information that a sizable tea and breakfast orders were being delivered from a local eatery around 4 am every day for almost a month, police officials said.

Accordingly, a raid was carried out on April 11 and 50 people, including the bungalow owner, Mayur Patole, were arrested.

“We could have arrested Bhutani on that day. He was on his way to Mumbai, but Patole alerted him about the raid. She had made eight calls to Bhutani from her mobile phone,” Suhas Bavche, deputy commissioner of police, Vasai-Virar, said.

Since then, Bhutani, 42, had been evading the Arnala police who chased him to nearly 20 locations, Bavche said. “We had sent four teams to Delhi and Haryana. The teams even went in pursuit of Bhutani till Chandigarh and Manali but missed him.”

Based on a tip-off, Bhutani was arrested in Delhi on Tuesday and was brought to Mumbai on Wednesday.

He has been charged with section 420 (cheating) and 468 (forgery) under the Indian Penal Code. He was produced before a court which remanded him in police custody for six days.

According to the police, the arrested call centre employees said they were tasked to answer calls from Australians who dialled the customer care of Paypal Australia Pty Limited, which provides financial services and where monetary transactions could be done through email. “The calls to the customer service were then diverted to this fake call centre through computer experts in countries like the UK and the US,” Bavche said.

The police have found banking details of at least 38 Australian nationals in the draft section of the emails of the employees.

“We tried to contact all the Australians, but only one of them responded stating that he had been duped of 10,000 Australian dollars. The victim told the police that there were three transactions made from his account at retail stores in the UK, Indonesia and Singapore. Now, we have the testimony of the victim as evidence to pursue the case further,” the police officer said.

Investigation revealed that Bhutani was running a fake call centre at Punjab’s Mohali. After it was raided, he shifted his base to Virar.

In October 2020, police officials said, Bhutani was allegedly kidnapped by officials from Kherki Daula police station in Haryana and a sum of ₹57 lakh was extorted from him. Two months later, Bhutani approached the Haryana State Vigilance Bureau, introducing himself as a businessman operating a call centre and selling religious products in the UK and Australia.

In his complaint, Bhutani alleged that he had started a business with the owner of a Karnal-based school, as he had a payment gateway for easy transactions. Bhutani claimed that he and his business partner had earned ₹1.2 crore, of which ₹80 lakh belonged to him. He also said that his business partner had connived with certain police officials to kidnap and extort money from him. Based on his complaint, the station house officer along with his staff at Kherki Daula police station were suspended and arrested, police officials said.

Two years later, Bhutani was arrested along with six others by the Cyberabad police for running a ₹50 crore credit card scam in Hyderabad. The police unravelled the scam after it raided the call centre operated by Bhutani in Mohali following a complaint lodged by HDFC Bank.

According to the Cyberabad police, Bhutani had set up three call centres at Janakpuri in New Delhi, Kaushambi in Ghaziabad and Mohali in Punjab for cheating foreign customers under the guise of providing technical services. He used to run Google ad-campaigns with his contact numbers in Australia, the UK and Singapore to solve problems relating to PayPal, Amazon or for technical devices like router – which he never provided, police officials said.

Five FIRs were registered against Bhutani and his associates in Cyberabad after which he was also booked and arrested under the stringent Telangana Preventive Detention Act. He was released from jail in August 2022, the Arnala police said.

Bhutani’s Facebook profile says the family hailed from Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh and had moved to Uttam Nagar in Delhi. Bhutani also claimed to be a director at NHP Techno Services, a private company registered in New Delhi between 2017 and 2019.