Two alleged criminal call centres operating out of Kolkata were closed down over the last few days in a joint operation being carried out by the Kolkata Police and their counterparts in the United Kingdom, the British Police.

The two call centres have been instrumental in defrauding several thousands of victims in the UK. Seven people have reportedly been arrested in connection with the scam.

It is not known how much the scam runs into but according to some sources, nearly 23,500 such frauds have been reported in London over the last one year. The two Kolkata call centres could be a part of a larger nexus.

The call centres were raided by 50 officers from the cyber crime division of the Kolkata Police as part of a worldwide four-year operation conducted by the British police and Microsoft. According to a release issued by the Kolkata Police, cops conducted raids at two locations in the city — one in Central Kolkata and another in the southern parts of the city — following two specific complaints by Bhupinder Singh Bindra, legal counsel of an IT major, under whose name the fraudulent activities were being carried.

In relation to the Kolkata-based scam, fraudsters would call up people and claim to be from Microsoft. They would say that their computer security had been compromised; then sell a worthless piece of software, or would dupe the victim into allowing access to their computer. They would then drain out the bank accounts.

According to cyber security experts of the city police’s cyber crime division, other methods of cash extraction would include use of pop-up ads or calls to unsuspecting victims and then convincing them of having detected a fault in their PC. Either the fraudsters would sell a bogus software to the victims, thereby gaining access to their PC, or they would persuade the victims into giving remote access. Once they had access, fraudsters targeted the bank account.

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