Mumbai Crime: Call-centre racket selling Viagra to US citizens busted

The racket involving eight people, suspected to have cheated thousands of people in the United States

Mumbai Crime Branch on Friday busted a racket in suburban Kurla that duped people in the US on the pretext of providing banned medicines to them. The racket involving eight people are suspected to have cheated thousands of people in the United States, a police official said.

According to the officials, the accused are suspected to have made calls through Voice over Internet Protocol and also sent messages to US nationals. These accused called the people in the US, posing as representatives of a pharmaceutical firm, offered to sell banned drugs including Viagra to them but didn't supply the medicines.

Acting on a tip-off, police conducted a raid on the call centre and arrested 8 suspects, manager Ekrama Mukadam (26), sales executive Arbaz Gafar Shaikh (20) and tele-callers Shahrukh Ansari (20), Junaid Sheikh (22), Kadir Sayyad (20), Atif Shaikh (20), Ahad Khan (21) and Salman Khan (23), the official said.

A case has been registered under IPC section 420 (cheating) and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act and further probe was on, he said.

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