The Electronic City police arrested three persons including two diploma course graduates, and a high school dropout from Tamil Nadu, for duping over 500 people, by offering loans from a fake finance firm.
Police arrested the accused Vikram Salian (27), Saranraj (26) and Javed (26). The trio were working as call centre executives for a couple months before setting up the fake company - Elite Finance Company - with branches in Madiwala and Bommanahalli last year. Police recovered wireless sets, nearly 200 SIM cards and Rs 7.5 lakh in cash from the accused.
M B Boralingaiah, DCP (South-East), said that to make easy money, the accused had started the unauthorised firm. “The trio became close friends while working at the call centre. The accused bribed a mobile service provider staff, to get 200 SIM cards, which were then used to trick hundreds of people. All who were part of this fraud were detained to conduct further investigations.” he said.
A senior police officer, meanwhile, said that as the accused had experience working at a call centre, they knew all the ins and outs, and hired 18 tele-callers including 14 women and four men, offering them monthly salaries ranging from Rs 15,000 to 20,000. Then, the accused gave them a target to contact a 100 people a day offering personal loans starting from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. Moreover, they also offered the employees a 2% commission, if they successfully convinced people to take the loan.
The officer further added that Javed, the mastermind, had got access to the contact details of many vulnerable individuals, from a former colleague at the Bajaj finance company.
Javed told his former colleague that he wanted to contact a number of people for a friend who has started a financing firm.
The accused used to provide contact numbers and SIM cards to the tele-callers, so that they could contact potential takers and offer loans at very low interest rates. After getting the list of people who are interested in taking the loan, the tele-callers would then collect all the documents and demand a processing fee depending upon the loan amount. After receiving the money from the victims, the accused would discard the SIM cards of the tele-callers from which the calls were made, and would provide them a new set of SIM cards to contact a fresh set of people.
Electronic City police inspector, M Mallesh, who busted the racket, said that victims who lost money between Rs 5,000 to 30,000 approached the police and filed complaints.
“Following a call records data verification, the trio were arrested. Further investigations revealed that the accused had cheated people to the tune of Rs 3 crore. Police are on the lookout for four more individuals in connection with the case, and efforts are on to nab them,” the inspector said.