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International call centre racket busted in Shillong

By Staff Correspondent

SHILLONG, Aug 29 - Meghalaya police has busted an international call centre racket that was involved in duping the US citizens by impersonating as Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials.

According to the police, the call centre and the gang involved in the racket was under surveillance �for quite sometimes,� however, due to lack of proper information and firm evidences the sleuths waited till they were nabbed last evening.

�We conducted the raids after coming to know that some of the members of the gang were coming to Shillong,� a senior police official said.

In the raid six members of the gang were arrested that included five from Meghalaya and one from Kerala. The arrested included Nina Gurung, Sweety Sutnga, Pynskhem Mawthoh from the State, while Amit Bhomick was from Tura. Riju Joseph the other member of the gang was from Kerala.

The members of the gang operated from an office close to the RBI�s office here near Cleave Colony. The modus operandi was simple, although it involved technical know-how, in which they called up the US citizens posing as IRS officials and asked them to pay up their tax returns.

The callers usually asked the US citizens to pay their tax or face criminal charges for concealment of tax returns. �Usually the victims paid up the amount,� the police said. The police said that the gang is part of a network that spreads across the country and raids are on to find the others involved in it.

It is also being investigated how the scamsters are able to get the data base of the US citizens although such scams have been reported throughout India in the past few years, which suggest of a wider network operating in the country.

In this present scam, it is being said that the headquarters of the gang is in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and therefore coordination with the Gujarat police would be sought to crack the case.

Although the investigation is on there are reports that each of the members of the gang operating from Cleave Colony got a minimum of Rs 4 lakh per month from the fraud.

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