Cops bust fake call centre racket; 4 held for duping Mumbai man of Rs. 1.30 lakh

The incident came to light after a 29-year-old Matunga resident, Yogesh Tukaram Rathod, was cheated of Rs. 1.30 lakh on the pretext of a job, as a ticketing executive with a leading airline.

The Matunga police recently busted a fake call centre racket and arrested four people from Noida after they duped a Mumbai resident of Rs. 1.30 lakh.

Police found that Rathod had uploaded his resume on an online portal in April 2019 and he started receiving calls from an unknown number in the same month. (HT FILE)

According to the police, the accused — Pankhuri Verma, 23; Ankush Rajesh Singh, 22; Amankumar Rajesh Singh, 24 and Shejad Maqbool, 26 — would offer jobs to people in different airlines and dupe them.

The incident came to light after a 29-year-old Matunga resident, Yogesh Tukaram Rathod, was cheated of Rs. 1.30 lakh on the pretext of a job, as a ticketing executive with a leading airline. During investigation, the police found that Rathod had uploaded his resume on an online portal in April 2019 and he started receiving calls from an unknown number in the same month.

“The caller told him that his resume had been shortlisted and even sent him an offer letter which confirmed his appointment as a ticketing executive with the airlines, and a salary of Rs. 70,000. He then received calls where he was asked to deposit processing fees, two months’ salary and other amounts for various purposes, in his account. The amount was debited later,” said an officer from Matunga police station, on condition of anonymity.

During investigation, the police found that a particular bank account was being used to transfer the money.

“The account was in Verma’s name, who is an engineering graduate. We arrested her on August 18. We found the rented flat in Noida [where the racket was being run] and arrested the three others,” said Maruti Shelke, police sub-inspector at Matunga police station.

Shelke said all accused had different tasks and shared different names while talking to any victim. “Verma played an important role in the process of luring victims. We found that the accused had made calls to many people across the country. We are investigating further to find how many people they cheated in Mumbai,” Shelke added.

The police said the four accused used to work at different call centres earlier and had created a plan to set up a fake call centre and dupe people.

Saurabh Tripathi, deputy commissioner of police, Zone 4, said, “The accused had rented a flat in Noida to run the call centre. They had hired over 12 employees, including six women, whose job was to make calls to the victims”

The police recovered 19 mobile phones, 22 sim-cards, a CPU, a 4G data card, a laptop, two ID cards, two debit cards and 20 registers from the flat, which they had rented in the name of a firm called Free Sky luxury travel solution.