Eight men who were running a call centre from a building in New Alipore have been arrested for allegedly cheating a US National by posing as senior officials of an American cyber security agency and duping her out of money online.
Calcutta police received the alert from the FBI through Interpol.
City police said US national Anne Forbush was allegedly cheated through a VoIP
(voice over Internet protocol) call in March this year when she was approached by a man posing as a senior official of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“CISA is an American agency meant to protect US cyberspace. The fraudster posed as one of the agency’s officials and by means of deceit he got remote access to
the woman’s laptop and siphoned off $144,000, which amounts to around Rs 1.1 crore in the Indian currency,” said an officer of the cyber police station.
Based on her complaint, the FBI took up the case and reportedly found that the server from where the woman was cheated was in India.
The internet protocol address of the devices from which the fraudulent VoIP calls were made was said to have been traced to a call centre in New Alipore.
“Finally, based on electronic surveillance, we zeroed in on the fourth floor of a building in Sahapur, New Alipore. The place was raided and eight persons were arrested,” said the officer.
Five mobile phones, a laptop and two hard disks were seized from them.
The eight arrested men are from Behala, Tollygunge, New Alipore, Sarsuna and Parnasree, the police said. They have been booked for cheating, criminal breach of trust and under sections of the Information Technology Act.
They were produced before a city court on Friday.
“We are checking if they have been involved in similar cases and targeted more foreigners,” said an officer.