FBI is believed to have approached the Thane police for case details.
The mastermind behind the Mira Road call center scam, which is the largest scam in the history of US’ Internal Revenue Services (IRS), is an Indian-American, Mid-day reports.
The scam in which 1.2 million Americans called up and 6,400 cheated, of a total of Rs 3.6 crore was unfolded when Thane Police raided three call centers situated in Mira Road and detained more than 500 employees for allegedly threatening US citizens.
According to the reports, Police already launched a manhunt for the mastermind and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is believed to have approached the Thane police for case details.
“We will cooperate with any agency approaching us for information. It’s an international racket and involvement of foreign nationals is suspected. An investigation being conducted from all angles,” Mid-day quoted Thane Police Commissioner Parambir Singh.
“We raided around there call cetres, It was a nine-storey building and seven were owned by the call center with each floor having 70 to 120 employees,” he said.
The call centers used VOIP calls and pose as IRS (Internal Revenue Services) officers. The victims, mostly loan defaulters, will be asked for the bank details after which the caller will hack into the bank account transferring money without the knowledge of the account holder.
“They have even made residents cry and plead if the latter requested for time saying they were on their way to some event, saying the IRS officials would land up at the event and shame them in front of everyone. They used a number of ways to threaten and asked them pay $10,000 dollars or more through preloaded debit cards I-tune or Target, and even made them disclose the 16-digit card number,” Singh added.
“The caller then used to send the number to his/her senior and further passed on to the mastermind. He would do the transaction, keep 30 per cent for himself and give the rest to the employee,” A senior Thane Crime Branch officer told Mid-day.
The police now targets to Ahmedabad, Noida and Bengaluru, where, they suspect, more such call centers are running.
Reports also adds that the county sherrif and US police had issued a public advisory in America six months back with such cases seeing a rise.