American names, fake QuickBooks badges, and Rs 40 crore: How 2 Bengaluru techies ran a shadow tax empire

BENGALURU: Karnataka police Thursday busted a fake call centre in Bengaluru and arrested two software engineers, said to be the brains behind the Rs 40cr fraud.

The call centre was allegedly defrauding US citizens on the pretext of giving tax advice through QuickBooks, an accounting software package made and sold by US firm Intuit.

Acting on a tip-off, Karnataka State Cyber Command sleuths raided Reckoning Service’s offices in Koramangala, HSR Layout and Choodasandra. Around 70 staffers, most of them telecallers, worked from these centres. Preliminary investigations said the duo — Prashanth, from Delhi, and Akash Gupta, from Uttar Pradesh — had been operating the company for four years.

In recent months, they had collected Rs 40 crore from unsuspecting US tax-payers. They have been taken into 10-day police custody for questioning.

Director general of police (Karnataka Cyber Command Centre) Pronab Mohanty said: “The staffers would introduce themselves as ‘technical support team from QuickBooks’ and offer accounting services, including licence renewal, for a fee. In plain words, they offered tax consultation and promised solutions. Trusting them, victims would transfer money, awaiting solutions which never would come.”

Police said the telecallers were equally gullible, not aware of the deception they were pulling off.

Telecallers instructed to assume American names

The telecallers were made to believe their company was affiliated to Intuit and they were part of a customer-facing team of QuickBooks, the online accounting software. The telecallers had been instructed to assume American names while handling calls with tax-payers.

The sleuths seized 44 storage devices, two mobile phones, two laptops and nine CPUs from their premises.

“The arrested duo are computer science degree holders and have worked as engineers in a few cities, including Bengaluru. We’ve seized scripts used for communicating with US citizens. In some cases, we discovered that accused persons sent fake notices to US citizens, warning of legal action for falsely filing tax returns. At the end of the notice, they would mention contact — Reckoning Service Pvt Ltd. Panicked individuals would contact the fake firm and fall prey,” an investigating officer said.

DGP Mohanty said he suspects the role of an American citizen in the racket. “Or else, how would the prime accused get to know the functioning of QuickBooks? Some miscreants sell information about companies and individuals,” he said.

The accused also created a company called Circle Square and used shell companies to route the money collected, sleuths said.