Santacruz police bust fake call centre, arrest 7

MUMBAI: Santacruz police arrested seven for running a fake loan call centre, defrauding victims, including one who lost ₹2.6 lakh.

MUMBAI: The Santacruz police on Wednesday arrested seven people for allegedly running a fake call centre to defraud people in the name of loans. According to the police, a complaint was filed by Pravin Solanki, a resident of Mangalwadi in Juhu, in December last year that an unknown person called him, introducing himself as an executive of Bajaj Holiday Travels Company, and offered him an online loan.

Santacruz police bust fake call centre, arrest 7

To process the loan, the complainant was asked to pay ₹2.6 lakh online, which he did. However, he was not granted the loan. Realising that he had been cheated, Solanki then approached the Santacruz police after which an FIR was registered under sections 318 (4), 319 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 66 (C), 66 (D) of the Information Technology Act.

During the investigation, the police studied the call data records of the phone number from which Solanki had received the call. Based on the analysis, it was found that the accused was present at Powai Plaza at JVLR in Powai.

A raid was conducted on this location on Tuesday and four women and three men were found to be operating a call centre to defraud citizens online. They were arrested on Wednesday and police seized property worth ₹4.15 lakh from them, including 15 mobile phones, four laptops, 49 packets of SIM cards, and one printer.