Police arrest owners of building

MUMBAI: The owners of a Mira Road building, in which a call centre was allegedly scamming US nationals of crores of rupees every day, have been arrested as they

MUMBAI: The owners of a Mira Road building, in which a call centre was allegedly scamming US nationals of crores of rupees every day, have been arrested as they knew about the illegal business and still let it pass.

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About a year back, five people struck a deal with real estate businessmen, Shaheen Iqbal Balasaheb, Nadeen Iqbal Balasaheb and Nasreen Iqbal Balasaheb to take their two-storied building on Rs7 lakh a month rent for office space. People were soon hired and segregated into trainees, dialers, callers, closers and floor managers.

Each of them was trained with scripts they read while calling US nationals and posing as US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officers to extort money.

A few days after the call centre became operational, the owners of the building came to know of the illegal activities being carried out there as they caught hold of a script they used. Also, one of the employees, Haider Mansoori, gave them the information by mistake. The trio was arrested as they did not make any rent agreement for the building and let the illegal business run.

The scripts the callers used to read had them threatening the US nationals of freezing and confiscating their retirement plan or seizing their passport along with their state ID. The script also included foreign nationals being threatened of deportation. The callers also used to hound their relatives to ensure they coughed up money, said Thane cops. Each floor was rented to different people and operated under different names such as Iserve, Call Tech Solutions, Tech Solutions, Universal Outsourcing Solutions and Lorex Impex Private Limited. Every floor had its own accountant, who told his boss the amount they extorted each day, which used to be around Rs 1.5 crore, said investigators.