Alleged kingpin of $300 million call centre scam, Sagar Thakkar nabbed by Mumbai Police

The scam came to light last year when police raided call centres at Mira Road in Thane district on the night of October 4-5

By: Rakesh Jha |
April 9, 2017 11:06 am

Mumbai Police has arrested Sagar Thakkar, the alleged conman who duped thousands of American in the tune of $300 million crore by running a fake call centre racket. A special team of Thane Police picked up Thakkar on early hours of Saturday at Mumbai airport following his deportation from Dubai.

Also famous as Shaggy among his friends. Thakkar was absconding since the scam was unearthed last year.

Thakkar allegedly operated call centres in the Mira Road-Bhayander belt and a parallel network of bogus call centres operating across the country since 2013.

Thakkar, who had gifted an Audi car worth Rs. 2.5 crore to his girlfriend with the ill-earned money, reportedly told the police that such call centres also exist in other countries, including Pakistan, Russia, Philippines, China and some African countries from where fraudulent phone calls are made to countries with large English-speaking populations.

He also reportedly told the police there are hundreds of such call centres operating from Hyderabad, Kolkata and Shillong, besides other cities and towns of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Jharkhand. The 24-year-old accused was a resident of Mumbai’s Nalasopara and is a graduate in Chemistry.

The accused seemed to have a thorough knowledge of computers and related technical know-how as well as that of the Indian and the US legal systems, according to Param Bir Singh, who interrogated Thakkar briefly before he was taken to the court.

The scam came to light last year when police raided call centres at Mira Road in Thane district on the night of October 4-5. Subsequently, police teams raided and shut down five call centres in Ahmedabad which were a part of the racket.

These tele-callers operated in a unique fashion, they pretended to be officials of US Internal Revenue Service and accused those receiving their calls as tax defaulters. The scammers sought financial and bank details of US citizens and if the victims refused the info they were threatened with arrest and deportation. After obtaining the requisite details from the American citizens, these call centre employees would siphon off money from their accounts. At least 100 calls were made every day of which 10-15 calls would materialise, these 3-4 ‘tax defaulters’ would pay under threat by the conmen, according to police.

PTI inputs