The Times Of India - 18-10-19
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Sahil Verma, who started a sham operation in Noida, was arrested for allegedly cheating
hundreds of Canadians and citizens of other countries
- Sahil Verma, who started a sham operation in Noida, 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
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.
Tags: investment schemes, tax, call centres, interpol, Sahil Verma, Canada Revenue Agency, Noida, fake offer letters
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