Image used for representational purpose only

NOIDA: The city's notorious hole-in-the-wall call centres have popped up on the radar of international law enforcement and, on Thursday, led to the first of several raids lined up over the next few days based on information shared by Interpol and the Canadian government.

Sahil Verma, a resident of Shahdra in Delhi who once worked with a Gurgaon-based BPO and later started a sham operation in Noida sector 63, was arrested for allegedly cheating hundreds of Canadians and citizens of other countries.

Noida police said Verma and his employees gathered names and contact details of foreign citizens and offered investment schemes that would help them save tax. The scale of the fraud is still being examined.

Police said they found a data bank of the Canada Revenue Agency and contact details of 251 Canadian citizens from an Excel sheet on a desktop at the call centre . There are four more Excel sheets that are password-protected.

The raid came a day after Canadian and Interpol officials met Noida police chief Ajay Pal Sharma to discuss the rising number of cases of foreigners getting cheated by illegal call centres in Noida. “This is just the beginning. More illegal call centres are running in the city, which will be busted soon. We will be conducting more raids,” Sharma said.

The police are also taking advice on preparing fresh guidelines for call centre operators. Verma’s fake call centre ran out of a small rented space in a three-storey building —D-242. He had 15 employees.

“The landlord of the building, where the miscreant ran the call centre, had filed a police complaint a few days ago against him for not paying rent,” circle officer Rajiv Kumar Singh said. “The miscreants called up Canadian residents and informed them about tax benefits. They claimed to offer the best tax benefits and asked them to send money and scanned documents online,” he added.

Singh said a search was on for other employees of the call centre. “Police recovered laptops, computers, routers, mobile phones and other IT equipment used in the sham operation. The accused were booked under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and sections of the IT Act,” he said.

Two fake call centres have been busted in the city in October and 50 over the past six months. The call centre busted on October 5 used to target people who uploaded their resume on job portals. The accused sent them fake offer letters and charged them a fee of Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 for getting a job. Eleven members of a gang were arrested by the cyber cell on October 10 from Greater Noida for cheating Army veterans in Delhi-NCR by offering fake insurance policies.

