KOLKATA: Bidhannagar Police has sealed more than 15 floors spread across at least six

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in Salt Lake over the last 14 months where fraudulent call centres were functioning. They were luring retired and elderly people to make investments in dud insurance over the past several years.

On Tuesday, TOI highlighted how Bidhannagar cops had busted a gang and sealed seven floors of one office building at EP-GP block in Salt Lake, beside RDB Cinemas where thousands of men and women were making fraudulent calls to people and robbing them of their savings. All seven floors belonged to one company — Deal Money Securities Pvt Ltd — that had been operating at Sector V for the past eight years.

“We have been probing into such fraudulent companies for the past several months and what we found that the initial complaints were just a tip of the iceberg. We kept probing further and found several such companies that duped thousands of victims over the years. We began arresting the company officials and sealing the floors,” said a senior officer of Bidhannagar cyber crime police station.

Apart from Deal Money, floors that housed offices of Rage Multistate Credit Co Operative Society Limited and Crater Online Retail Private Limited — that had four floors and four different buildings in Sector V — had also been sealed.

Cops said the modus operandi was same with all the companies where the callers represented themselves as IRDA officials willing to settle a disputed insurance bond.

The officer said that over the last few months, they had found victims, who complained of losing between Rs 20,000 and more than a crore, falling into their trap.

“The owner of Crater Retail Private Limited, Rajnish Singh, is a brilliant mind who had dropped out of IIT Kharagpur after completing six semesters. He is still under police custody and is nonchalant of his activities. We are probing other similar complaints as well,” said another officer from the Bidhannagar Police cybercrime station said.