Call centre racket: Mastermind may have fled India

Five days after the Thane police busted a major scam wherein call centres were allegedly duping US nationals of thousands of crores of rupees for the past one year, its crime branch has identified the scam’s key Gujarat-based mastermind who is suspected to have fled the country after the crackdown began. The suspect, Shahagir Thakkar, is a 24-year-old with a degree in Information Technology who allegedly funded the eight Mira-Road based call-centres in Thane that are under the police scanner.

Thakkar is said to have gone missing after he purportedly came to know about the Thane police’s Tuesday raids on three call centres located at Mira Road, whose employees were extorting US citizens. Thakkar is suspected to have left the country either on Wednesday or Thursday, said a senior case investigator. The employees were contacting the US citizens telephonically via VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) in the name of the American tax authority, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), asking for penalty payments in lieu of alleged taxation-related irregularities, said a police source.

The source said Thakkar allegedly shut down a call centre being run by him in Ahmedabad’s Vastrapur, emptying it of its belongings, before vanishing. A Thane police team that reached Ahmedabad seeking his custody had paid a visit to the call centre but returned empty-handed. The police is set to pick up several Thakkar aides who are based in Maharashtra to get clues on his whereabouts and the wider conspiracy.

A police source said, “Our team went Gujarat two days ago on the trail of Thakkar who is the scam’s brain and had funded the fraudulent operations of the eight call centres under the scanner.”

How Thakkar was named According to sources, the police had narrowed down upon the suspect after talking to the “team leaders” in the call centre. “The suspect allegedly called the shots across all the three call centres that have been raided,” said a source. He added that even the operatives in the US, reported to this suspect. Investigators said the man could be one of the “brains” behind the scam. “All the ‘senior team members’ in the Thane-based call centres had to give him daily reports,” said a source.