In what came as a boost to the ongoing investigations into the multi-crore call centre scam, a senior official from US security agency FBI on Friday met Thane Police Commissioner Parambir Singh and shared information about the American nationals who have allegedly been duped to the tune of millions of dollars by those behind the scam.
Senior FBI agent Sohel Daud, who arrived at Thane in the morning, met Singh and senior crime branch officials investigating the call centre scam and shared information with the investigators present.
Confirming the FBI agent’s meeting with the Thane police chief and other officials, Joint Commissioner of Police Ashutosh Dumbre said: “The FBI official has shared information with us. We will verify the information provided by them. The information will definitely come in handy for us in our investigations”.
Dumbre said that the FBI appreciated the efforts taken by the Thane police in uncovering the call centre in which hundreds of US nationals have lost considerable sums of money.
The FBI officials are working in tandem with the Thane crime branch sleuths in the investigations into the call centre scam. As part of the exercise, both the Thane police and FBI officials are sharing information relating to the scam.
Informed sources said that Daud would be in the city for a few more days at Thane, where he would question the accused arrested in connection with the call centre scam.
In all, the Thane police have so far arrested 71 persons in connection with the multi-crore call scam, which is estimated to be order of more than Rs 500 crore. More arrests are expected in connection with the scam.
Meanwhile, the Thane crime branch sleuths have launched a manhunt for one Sagar Dharmesh Thakkar alias Shaggy, the mastermind behind the scam. As part of the investigations, the Thane police have issued against Thakkar, who has been absconding ever since the raids were conducted on first of the three call centres at Mira Road in the adjoining Thane district on October 4.
The efforts by the Gujarat police, who are co-operating with the Thane crime branch sleuths in the investigations, to nab Thakkar have drawn blank for so far. Twenty-four-year-old (24) Thakkar, who used to live in Ahmedabad till recently, is suspected to be holed up in Dubai.
The preliminary investigations have revealed that the culprits behind the scamj had allegedly duped US nationals by posing themselves as US’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials. They have extracted huge sums of money from the US nationals by threatening the latter with “tax investigations”.
Among other things, the investigations have seized the scripts that were used to dupe the US nationals.
The modus operandi employed by the accused was that they made persons made calls through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and made use of “Magic Jack”, a small device which can be shifted from one location to another while in use.
The investigators are, meanwhile, trying to trace the trail of money received from the US nationals.
The investigations have revealed that the ill-gotten money has been routed to Gujarat, where teams of visiting Thane police officials are searches. The investigators have a reason to believe that the accused arrested in connection with the raids on call centres at Mira Road have links with those operating in Gujarat.