NOIDA: Sagar Thakkar alias

, the most notorious fake call centre kingpin known to Indian law enforcement agencies, is the man behind sham centres in Delhi-NCR, police said on Saturday.

Not only did Shaggy run illegal call centres in Mumbai’s Mira Road and Ahmedabad, he had spread the tentacles of his business to the US as well. Most of his victims were based in the US and Canada, whom he cheated with either offering holiday packages or threatening them of tax defaults and forcing them to pay.

Shaggy’s name and links with fake call centres in Noida and Gurgaon cropped up when Noida police questioned the 126 people arrested during a raid on a Sector 63 building on Friday. The arrest of 126 people in a single raid on a fake call centre run by Shaggy comes close second to a similar operation in Thane in 2016, in which 197 people were picked up.

“During interrogation, the arrested call centre employees had only one name on their lips — Shaggy. Ravinder Pashuja, one of the two handling the operations of the call centre in Sector 63, was Shaggy’s main man in Noida,” Gautam Budh Nagar SSP Ajay Pal Sharma said.

A boy who grew up in Nalasopara in a one-room kitchen, Shaggy got into the business of cheating people as early as 16. Along with his mentor Jagdish Kanani, who had the experience of working in call centres abroad, he found employment with some well-known agencies in Ahmedabad. But when he realised there was much money to be made, with the right contacts and databases at his disposal, he set up his first fake call centre in Ahmedabad. Soon, he was running sham centres in Mumbai and NCR.

Believed to be just 25 now, Shaggy’s name had first surfaced during raids in Thane in October 2016 when police discovered he was the brain behind nine bogus call centres running from Mira Road.

It had turned out to be one of the largest

scams operating out of India. During the Thane raids, police detained 630 employees of Shaggy’s call centres — 5 times the number arrested in the Noida operation on Friday — and later arrested 197.

Shaggy, who police believe has made millions through these rackets, fled to Dubai but was deported and arrested in April 2017 when he landed in Mumbai. He got bail in June.

in Mumbai for allegedly managing the finances of the sham call centres.

Shaggy, however, took his business overseas. One bogus call centre run by him in the US was raided in July this year and 20 people were arrested from there. He was charged by the US justice department. Shaggy was among 80 people named in a 5,786-page chargesheet.

Police have found that youths employed in Shaggy’s call centres were highly trained, stuck to a script and could hold a conversation up to 30 minutes. “His employees would prepare a script to strike a conversation with their American victims. They posed as officials of the US Internal Revenue Service, the Indian equivalent of the income tax department, and threaten them with raids for tax defaults. When the victims pleaded innocence, they demanded money through wire transfer or purchasing Google Play or iTunes cards. The cards would be encashed in China or Dubai and the money routed via hawala,” an officer said.

Noida police chief Sharma said there were more such bogus call centres across NCR being managed by Shaggy. “Expect more raids in the coming days,” he said.