After the arrest of seven Mumbai police busted a gang on Saturday that allegedly duped people living in US and other countries by telling them that they need to pay tax dues, an official said. This is not the first time when such scam has floated. A similar incident had come to light two years ago when Thane Crime Branch had unearthed a scam where US residents were targeted.
The Thane police raided a call centre in Mira Road locality and arrested seven people and seized several computers. According to Assistant Superintendent of Police Atul Kulkarni, the police had raided over a tip-off. A case under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Information Technology Act was registered with Navghar police.
According to police, the accused fetched the financial details of the US residents and the other countries people from the loans they had taken and their salaries. The accused called the foreign nationals pretending to be from that country’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and demanded payment of tax through gift cards of online shopping sites or bitcoins.
The arrested people were identified as Juber Shaikh (26), Sabio Gonsalvis (42), Raju Rathod (29), Harsh Anwar Kazi (23), Siddharth Pillai (22), Saurabh Jha (29) and Siddhi Nair (29). The police is yet to find out the amount of money duped by them.
