Sitting in an 11th floor apartment on the outskirts of Kolkata and impersonating officials of the Unites States’ Department of Homeland Security (DHS), scammers duped at least 40 US nationals by threatening them to prosecute on the charges of espionage for the Russians, said an officer of West Bengal police’s cyber crime wing.
The accused intimidated their targets by claiming that there was evidence that Russians had compromised US security by using their computers for questionable purposes with their assistance, said the officer.
The sleuths learned about the new modus operandi of “espionage” extortion by the cyber fraudsters after arresting three young suspects from South 24 Parganas, where they were running a call centre. The three were identified as Joy Halder, 25, Tanmoy Mondal, 25 and Subhajit Biswas, 29 — who trained themselves in speaking English with an American accent.
“Halder is the suspected kingpin of the racket who purchased two apartments whose total worth is ₹2.5 crore and an Audi A4-40 TFSI whose market value is ₹52 lakh. We seized the apartment and the SUV. We have found the data-base of at least 40 US nationals who had been contacted and duped by the gang running this call centre,” said Anjali Singh, deputy commissioner of police, cyber crime wing.
Also read: Police arrest 52 cybercriminals in nationwide crackdown
The laptops, phones and other devices found from the possession of the arrested suspects were sent for forensic examination and retrieval of the deleted data, if any, said the police. “We suspect more people are involved in the racket operating since 2021,” said Anjali.
The sleuths working on this case have started reaching out to the victims in the United States one by one. “Once the preliminary task of contacting the victims is over, their statements may be videotaped as witnesses in this case. The individual statement of the victims will become important before the court to get the accused convicted for the crime that they committed in India,” said a police officer.
The investigators have found that the men running the call centre had trained themselves in speaking English with an American accent to persuade their clients that they were indeed from the DHS in the US
“After contacting, the accused would scare the targets by saying that electronic evidence had been found that made them suspects of espionage for the Russians. This was a new way of duping people,” said a police officer.
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