Call centre that cheated people with job offers on ships busted

Noida: Four men, who targeted people across the country and defrauded them of lakhs of rupees by promising them jobs on ships, were arrested on Wednesday.The accused — Rahul, a resident of Jalaun; Prashant, a resident of Aligarh; Vishal Sharma, a resident of Gautam Budh Nagar; and Saif Warish, a resident of Kanpur Nagar — collected data on young people seeking jobs through the internet and phone calls, according to police.
They ran a call centre in the Sector 132 area, which has been busted by Noida's Cyber Crime and Sector 126 police stations in a joint operation. Rahul is the gang leader, who rented the building where the fake call centre — Sea Hire Marine Services Company — was operating for Rs 50,000 per month. The call centre was being run from there for the past year, police said. The four would call the victims and lure them with promises of jobs at "crew-ship companies". By promising them attractive salaries , they extorted between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.6 lakh in the name of registration fees, processing fees and other expenses. After receiving the money, the accused either stopped answering the phone or started demanding more fees. Police said the accused "obtained approximately Rs 1 crore in various bank accounts through this method". Additional DCP Manisha Singh said the police received confidential information that the call centre was extorting money from people under the guise of providing jobs, following which the joint team raided the site and busted the fake company.Police seized three laptops, seven mobile phones, 26 calling data sheets, 21 registers, four seals, four fake joining letters and several bank documents A case was registered against the accused at the cyber crime police station under relevant sections of the Information Technology IT Act. According to the police, the accused, most of them graduates, committed the fraud "for a long time". Examination of the seized bank passbooks and accounts revealed complaints filed against them in several statesincluding Kerala, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Police are now investigating these accounts and the gang's network.