Several US citizens have allegedly been duped by men sitting in an apartment on the south-eastern fringes of Calcutta who impersonated officials of the United States’ department of homeland security (DHS) and threatened
them saying evidence had emerged that Russians had used their computers for suspicious activities.

Three men have been arrested in Sonarpur, about 30km from the heart of Calcutta, in connection with the case.

This is not the first time fraudsters sitting in Calcutta have targeted unsuspecting people far and wide but police said this was a new method: fraudsters trying to use the threat of international espionage to scare people into paying.

“The callers would tell their victims over the phone that as US-Russia relations were at a low, such activities had raised the alarm for US national security and so, the investigation had been initiated,” said an officer of the cyber wing of Bengal police that made the arrests.

“The fraudsters would say if it was found that the computer user was connected with any Russian citizen for these unusual activities, then he or she will have to pay a heavy penalty and potentially go to jail. They used to show letters of the DHS with a government logo and levy ‘penalties’ on these individuals. The money would be converted into cryptocurrency and routed back to India through China,” the officer said.

The police identified the accused as Joy Halder, 25, of East Jadavpur, Tanmoy Mondal, 25, of Narendrapur, and Subhajit Biswas, 29 of Sonarpur.

During investigation, the police said they found cryptocurrency wallet addresses in the handsets of the arrested men through which transactions to the tune of ₹10 crore had been made in the last two years.

The police seized an Audi A4 from Halder, the prime accused. The market price of the Audi model is upwards of ₹52 lakh.

The police have contacted eight cryptocurrency exchanges in India and abroad for more details, the officer said.

Halder had spent around ₹2.5 crore — suspected to be a portion of the proceeds of crime — to purchase two flats.

Many call centres have been busted across Calcutta over the past few years for alleged fraud. In most instances, the callers posed as officials of reputable software companies offering technical assistance to their clients.

In this case, the fraudsters would also send pop-up messages to the phone numbers of US nationals mentioning several pornographic sites have been visited using the person’s Internet connection and all the phone data was about to be erased.

“The fraudsters would also pose as officials of Microsoft and offer technical support
at a service charge to remove the warning messages that were sent by them,” said the officer.

However, their main modus operandi was to scare US citizens by saying their laptops and Internet connections were being used by Russians for suspicious activities.

Call centre ‘fraud’

Nine people were arrested on Monday for allegedly running a call centre where callers used to impersonate officials of an anti-virus company and dupe people in Australia. Cops said the accused nine would be produced before court on Tuesday.