Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Cyber Crime police busted a call centre racket involving a dating application which attracted gullible users who were blackmailed subsequently. According to the cybercrime officials, three individuals who were working in the call centre with its headquarters at Kolkata were arrested and 16 others have been sent notices by the cops.

Speaking to the media on Monday, CCS additional police commissioner Avinash Mohanty said that a Kolkata based individual Soma Roka had set up a call centre on the name of Love Arts. Arnab Soor was working as developer in this agency while Mohammad Imran was a junior developer. The trio appointed 16 young women as telecallers. They were being on a monthly basis and were entrusted with the task of receiving phone calls and talking to the callers.

Soma even devised a standard operating procedure for the staff members. They would establish contact on the net claiming of they would provide online dating service and would gather phone numbers of callers. The telecallers would then speak to those who responded to their calls and would describe themselves as an agency offering online dating services.

To callers who fell into the trap, the agency would seek Rs 1025 as online registration fee. They would later lure callers with platinum, gold and silver schemes and milk them to the extent of Rs 3500 for silver, Rs 5,500 for gold and Rs 10,500 for platinum membership. They would further draw them in by saying that the callers would get an opportunity to meet the girls in question. The next step would be to get the amounts deposited in their bank accounts in addition to procuring the phone number, email id, photograph and address of the individual.

Once again, the bait offered was putting in touch with the girl who lived close to where the client was from. They even sent out a few numbers to a few who paid their membership fee. These telephone numbers belonged to girls who were employed in their so-called call centre. These girls would check where the caller was from, claimed that they lived closeby and lured them through sleazy chat. The trio then created an Enjoy group taking it one notch up. Subsequently they uploaded details of their callers on dating sites and this is where they twisted the knives into their clients' backs. Posing as police officers on phone, they would threaten to take action against them claiming that registering on such sites was a criminal offence. Fearing disrepute and also public exposure, the clients would cough up huge sums of money running into lakhs. This was revealed by the cyber crime police who busted the call centre racket on a tip off from two victims from the city.

The cops had set up a special team to conduct a raid on the premises in Kolkata and brought Soma Roka, Mohammad Imran and Arnad Soor on a PT warrant to Hyderabad and remanded them to judicial custody.

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