Mushrooming illegal call centres keep police in West Bengal’s IT hub on toes – Hindustan Times

Illegal call centres have mushroomed in West Bengal’s IT hub Bidhannagar duping people of lakhs of rupees and they are keeping police on their toes, according to officials familiar with the matter.

“At least 25 such illegal call centres have been busted since September and 292 people, including employees, have been arrested. We have recovered around ₹5 crore,” said Biswajit Ghosh, deputy commissioner of detective department of the Bidhananagar police.

Police said that the call centres lure people into traps by posing as representatives of reputed firms and promising all kinds of services including placements in private companies after training, handsome returns for installing mobile towers and selling anti-virus for computers.

Grilling of the accused persons have provided the cops with a detailed overview of how these call centres operate and dupe people not only in India but also those in the US and European countries.

Recruitment and training

The brains behind these call centres are mostly youngsters who are former BPO employees and have knowledge about how call centres operate, sleuths have found. They are based in other cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad and operate remotely by keeping employees.

“The employees, who are recruited, are mostly local youths. Speaking fluently in English is the main criteria while recruiting. Thereafter they are given a basic training on how to proceed with their calls, what to say, how to convince and the accent,” said a police officer who did not wish to be named.

Salaries may start from ₹15,000 for the callers and can go up to ₹70,000 – 80,000 for the floor managers.

“During raids we have also seized ready scripts which the callers use when speaking to clients,” said the officer.

A call centre doesn’t remain in one place for more than five to six months. Once complaints start pouring in and the duped clients start demanding their money back, the set-up is wrapped up.

“Old employees are fired and a new set-up comes up in a different address with a new set up of employees. There is no dearth of unemployed youths seeking jobs,” said the officer.

The office and set up

The call centres are mostly located in office spaces in the commercial buildings in the IT hub. The offices are taken on rent from agents and the rent of each cubicle may range around ₹4,000 – ₹5,000 depending upon the location.

“A proper office set up is created with various sections. Once the front-line callers chance upon a prospective client, the case is passed on to the next section which comprises seniors who have better know-how of the technicalities and businesses and are adept in convincing people,” said another officer.

While some call centres operate only during the day as they mostly target Indian clients, there are some which operate in shifts both during the day and the night as they make international calls.

“One such centre was busted in the last week of November in which the callers targeted clients from the USA and Canada. They used to pose as employees of a multinational company dealing with computer anti-virus. Eight persons were arrested,” said an officer of the Electronics Complex police station.

Sleuths, however, said that the masterminds, who are remotely located, keep a virtual watch on the day-to-day operation of the call centre. Most of the data is kept on clouds and remote servers.

“When a raid starts, the first thing we do is to isolate the employees so that they can’t access the computer anymore. But many times, it has been seen that the mastermind, who is keeping a close watch, logs out from the cloud as soon as he sees that activity in the call centre has stopped for a few minutes and none of the computers are working. Once he logs out or deletes the cloud we hardly get any data,” said an official.

Modus operandi

Police said that in most of the cases the call centres have been found to be duping people either by promising jobs or by promising handsome returns.

“The racketeers prepare fake documents by duplicating documents of the telecom companies and government agencies and departments such as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) which would be required to convince a person who has a plot of land and agrees to set up a tower,” said another official.

While for domestic callers they start making calls randomly and serially to find out prospective clients, for international contacts they rely on the dark web where such contacts are sold for a few dollars, sleuths have found during interrogation.

“Those involved in job rackets first target the candidates through job portals and then lire them for training promising lucrative jobs. One such centre, which was busted in December, promised jobs in the aviation sector. At least 14 persons were arrested. The job aspirants are made to pay hefty amounts. The company winds up after a few months of operation,” said the official.

Cops on their toes

“As awareness is spreading and more and more such setups are being busted, people who have been cheated are also coming forward to lodge complaints,” said the officer.

Continuous raids are going on based on the sleuths’ own surveillance system and the complaints that come in. During raids the call logs are checked and the data stored in the computer’s server is also checked for clues.

“In December alone at least four such call centres were detected,” said the officer.

The accused are mostly booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Indian Telegraph Act.