Meghalaya Police bust gang of International fraudsters from Shillong

SHILLONG, Aug 28, 2017: The Meghalaya Police on Monday busted a gang of fraudsters from Shillong involved in an international scam of looting American citizens while posing to be agents of Internal Revenue Service.

According to East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police (City) Vivek Syiem, acting on a tip off, the district police had set up surveillance on an international scam — Internal Revenue Service Scam whereby people from these two so called IRS Call Centres located in Dhankheti adjacent to RBI office at Fruit Garden call up American citizens and threaten them to pay the taxes.

On Monday evening, police busted the call centres, apartments of the accused and arrested six individuals who have been identified as Sweety Sutnga, Pynskhem Mawthoh and Nina Gurung from Shillong Amit Bhomick from Tura and Riju Joseph from Kerela.

Police informed that there are many gullible American citizens who have become victims of this scam and paid large amount of money and the same would be transferred to different places.

These two centres are being run from Shillong and police on Monday busted two places – the residence of the accused and recovered large number of documents and scripts, DVRs which contains all the softwares whereby they communicate with the American citizens.

"They pose as IRS agents and make the American citizens pay that money. It is a big cheating scam. It has been happening in so many parts of the country like Gujarat, Mahali and Thane and recently it was busted in Guwahati," Syiem said.

Till now, six people have been apprehended, five from an apartment located near Birla house enroute to Tripura Castle Cleve Colony and the another suspected to be one of the main players was arrested from another apartment near Horticulture Office in Cleve Colony.

Police recovered over 70 hard-disks, huge number of documents, cash and CCTVs footages of the room where they operate which is adjacent to RBI office at Fruit Garden.

"There is so much more to do, in fact we would be working with other states as well to arrest the other culprits. We have alerted other state police and investigation will follow," Syiem said.

It was informed that the gang have been involved for a couple of months but police received the information recently. "We are yet to ascertain whether they have done it only out here or in other places also. We will conduct a thorough investigation to find out where the money is going, how are their channels and their networks," added the SP.

Syiem also informed that a huge amount of money is involved in this case while stating that the employees of these call centres are being paid Rs 3-4 lakh a month while the apartments they are staying costs Rs 30-40, 000 a month and rent for their office also amounts to over Rs 2 lakh a month.

"Huge money is involved and it is more appealing for them because when we convert American currency to Indian, the amount is almost double," Syiem said.

When asked whether the arrested persons are the only players involved or the same is being monitored by someone, Syiem said "They are the main players out here but there are others also who at this juncture I will not disclose and are still at large and who we know will be visiting this country," adding that this cases require the cooperation of other state police as well.

Police will be registering a case under different sections of the law — IT Act, sections of IPC (Cheating) and embezzlement.

TNT News