Eight persons were arrested in Maheshtala, South 24-Parganas, early on Friday on charges of duping US citizens posing as members of a software company’s technical support team and siphoning funds from their bank accounts, police said.

According to officers, the siphoned money was transferred through multiple foreign accounts before being transferred to India.

The group of eight arrested are aged between 18 and 45 years. They were operating from a flat in a housing complex in Maheshtala, the police stated.

“They were running a fake call centre from the apartment from where they were making calls to people based in the US posing as the technical support group members of a leading global software company,” said an officer of the cyber crime cell of Kolkata Police.

“As a part of their modus operandi, the callers would convince their targets to download a screen-sharing app,” said the officer.

Once the mobile app was downloaded, the fraudsters would gain remote access to the victims’ devices and make financial transactions without their consent.

“The preliminary investigation has revealed that by exploiting the unauthorised access into the devices of the victims, the fraudsters unlawfully accessed the victims’ internet banking accounts, including those maintained with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, TD Bank, and Navy Federal Credit Union. Thereafter, funds were fraudulently siphoned from the victims’ bank accounts and transferred to foreign bank accounts and digital wallets, or converted into Apple Gift Cards, which were controlled by the fraudsters,” said joint commissioner (crime), Kolkata Police, Rupesh Kumar.

To conceal their true identity and location, the fraudsters used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), including TurboVPN, the police said.

The victims were further deceived through the use of “forged and fabricated electronic documents purportedly issued by the software company and other government and non-government organisations of the US,” an officer said.

The case was registered last November.

The police said that several others had been arrested earlier in the same case.

An officer said that this was an international racket. The fact that the siphoned money was transferred through foreign accounts proves so.

Fraudsters usually use mule accounts in India to transfer the siphoned money. However, in this case, accounts located abroad were used.

“We are probing this angle,” an officer said.