Mumbai Police on Friday arrested eight persons allegedly involved in cheating US citizens by promising to supply banned drugs including Viagra.
The racket, operating from a call centre in suburban Kurla for the last two years, is suspected to have cheated thousands of people in the United States, a police official said.
Unit-5 of city police's Crime Branch raided the call centre and arrested its manager Ekrama Mukadam (26), sales executive Arbaz Gafar Shaikh (20) and tele-callers Shahrukh Ansari (20), Junaid Shikh (22), Kadir Sayyad (20), Atif Shaikh (20), Ahad Khan (21) and Salman Khan (23), the official said.
The accused called people in the US by posing as representatives of a pharmaceutical firm and offered to sell banned drugs including Viagra, said Dilip Sawant, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection).
If the person showed interest in buying, the tele-callers sought payment in US Dollars. The buyers would find later that they had been cheated as they received no drugs and could not contact the so-called sellers again.
The accused are suspected to have cheated gullible buyers in the US of lakhs of dollars but the exact amount was yet to be ascertained, DCP Sawant said.
The calls were made through the Internet, using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), he said.
Police seized a laptop, 11 hard disks, mobile phones and some other equipment during the raid, Sawant said.
A case under IPC section 420 (cheating) and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act has been registered and further probe was on, he said.
In the recent years, police in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane have busted several similar 'call-centre' rackets which targeted people in the US.
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