One person arrested over tower installation fraud

MP  | Kolkata: One person was arrested for allegedly duping a large number of people in the name of a renowned mobile service provider over installation of network towers. 

Pradip Samaddar, alias Mithu, was arrested last night from Ramgarh at Netaji Nagar. 

After producing him before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM), Bidhannagar, Samaddar has been remanded to 5-day police custody. According to the police, he is the prime accused. 

Sources informed that the amount is feared to have gone up to Rs 50 crore. Previously, seven persons were arrested on August 25 from an office in Salt Lake sector V. 

According to the investigators, these persons used to call anonymously to convince people to install network towers within their premises and when the owners were convinced, the accused used to charge them for commencing work.

The alleged cheater's target was people from the rural belt of West Bengal. They used to contact and lure the customers to their clutch. Money was being taken in the name registration fees, no objection certificate fee from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), including other miscellaneous charges. 

As the payment mode was through demand draft, online fund transfer or cheque, apart from cash, nobody doubted any foul play.

Initially, the customers were only told about the registration fee — Rs 17,500. They also used to promise huge facilities in return to their investments, such as large amount of money, job for a young person in the family among many other lucrative offers. 

After getting the registration fees, the alleged cheaters used to tell the customers about other paid mandatory procedures. In this way, another Rs 10 lakh were taken from the customers after which contact was cut off. As the customers did not know about their sector V office, nobody could reach out to them or check whether they were authentic. In an around the month of June, when some duped customers somehow managed to reach the original service provider's office to investigate the matter, the crime came to light. 

Later on June 15, manager, security and loss prevention department of the original company filed a complaint with Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station.