Two men and a woman who allegedly ran a fraudulent call centre in Sector V were arrested early on Wednesday.
The accused are from Assam, police said.
They were arrested from a hotel in Digha by a team from the Electronics Complex police station in Sector V. Officers said the team was provided information about the trio by the detective department of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate.
“The two men and the woman were hiding in Digha to evade arrest,” an officer of the commissionerate said.
The employees of the call centre — GogomovingTechnology Pvt Ltd — would call up potential victims posing as officials of cellphone service providers to enquire if they owned any vacant plot orhad an open rooftop, a senior officer in the commissionerate said.
Once a victim said yes, the caller would send a link asking the person to fill it in stating details of the property. The person would also be asked to provide documents related to the ownership of the land or the building.
“The callers would lure their victims by promising a high one-time payment and a lucrative rental scheme if they allowed setting up of mobile phone towers on their premises. Next, the callers would ask their victims to pay various fees, including a registration fee, a no-objection fee and a processing fee. They would say their proposals were approved by TRAI,” the officer said.
All contacts would be snapped once the victims paid the fees.
Most of the people duped by the gang operating from the call centre were from Assam and Odisha, the officer said. “The call centre operated from a rented space on the sixth floor of the Merlin Matrix building in Sector V’s DN Block,” he said.
Earlier in the week, another team from the Electronics Complex police station had raided the call centre and arrested 14 employees.
