The Thane Police Crime Branch on Monday found fake loan documents used in the telecalling racket that was busted at a call centre in Ambarnath recently.
Racket busted
Last week, eight people were arrested and 18 others were detained for posing as bank executives and collecting “processing fees” from U.S. citizens after convincing them that they had been selected for personal loans. The accused had emailed the victims loan documents in the name of Columbus Bank in the U.S., which lent an air of credibility to the racket. The police will use now use the documents to trace the victims and strengthen their case. The manager of the call centre, who is suspected to have been the mastermind, is being questioned.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Abhishek Trimukhe, Thane Crime Branch, said the accused during interrogation revealed that they had emailed the fake documents to the victims. The Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Kalina has analysed the hard drives recovered from the call centre and have sent the reports to the police for examination. Mr. Trimukhe said, “We will be contacting people whose email ids are mentioned in the reports.”
A team of policemen will reach out to the victims and gather details of their conversations with the accused. Their responses will form a crucial part of the police’s evidence at the trial stage, sources said. The officer said the accused made around ₹7 lakh from the racket every month, and $100 to $500 every day.
An officer said, “Convincing victims that they were eligible for loans they had not applied for was tougher than expected. Sometimes the accused made 40 to 50 calls to a person over several days and still failed to convince him.”
Hunt for accomplice
The police is on the lookout for a Ludhiana-based man who helped process the payments made through iTunes cards. The officer said, “The victims were instructed to buy iTunes cards for amounts agreed upon as ‘processing fees’. A 16-digit code was sent to the accused and it was passed on to the Ludhiana-based accomplice. He redeemed the amount, kept 40% of it and passed on the rest to the accused.”
