PANAJI
Goa police's Cyber Crime Cell busted a fake call centre operating from a rented bungalow in Old Goa in a post-midnight operation on Friday and arrested sixteen persons, including eight women, working there.
Officials of the Cyber Crime Cell said they have seized 14 laptops and eight mobiles in the operation.
The fake call centre targeted foreigners, posing as operatives of online retail giant Amazon, and extracted payments mostly from American citizens, the officials said.
Several Americans were defrauded by inducing them to share confidential details of Amazon gift cards for values ranging from 500 to 1,000 US dollars, the Cyber Crime Cell officials said.
Fake call centre operations busted by the police in the recent past had targeted foreigners and duped them into making online payments to fake accounts for insurance related issues.
Recently, however, another such fake call centre operation was busted in Porvorim operated again by a Gujarat native.
The Cyber Crime Cell has booked a case against the prime suspect Mohammed Danvi alias Roy Fernandes, a Gujarat native, and the others arrested under sections 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66(c) and 66 (d) of the Information Technology Act.
All the 16 persons arrested in the case have been remanded to judicial custody for 14 days by Panjim's Judicial Magistrate First Class.
Police said, the involvement of more people in the racket cannot be ruled out at this juncture of the ongoing investigations.
