kolkata at least five fake call centres have been busted in and around the city and around 53 men and women were arrested in the last three weeks since usbased youtuber mark rober released a 26minute video on may 9 flagging kolkata as one of the epicentres of the scamming call centre racket that dupes people in the video the youtuber had taken a stepbystep approach to demonstrate with audiovisual evidence how three call centres in the city interacted with their victims by impersonating officials from ecommerce businesses government tax bodies or digital antivirus companies through emails and phone calls they manipulated the victims into transferring stipulated amounts to them citing reasons like pending taxes or incorrect refundsrober shared their names and addresses cctv footage from the premises videos of people getting scammed in real time and even the names and visuals of those helming these firms on sunday toi carried firstperson accounts of two such callers who used to work in these dud firms they shared tactics they used to scam people in countries like the usa the uk germany australia as well as indiathe fresh exposure prompted cops from bidhannagar kolkata police and cid to swing into action and start raiding call centres around the city while bidhannagar police have so far busted three call centres in salt lake sector v and new town and arrested 28 people cid in association with kolkata police busted two one in barasat and another in shakespeare sarani and arrested 25the offences range from duping foreigners on the pretext of tech support selling websites selling subscriptions and providing easy loan on mobile apps indians were mostly duped on the pretext of online lottery awards mobile tower installation and provident fund or old insurance money disbursement we have been regularly sensitizing citizens especially the elderly to be cautious when dealing with such calls we asked them to never transfer any money or share otps without consulting bank officials said an officeranother officer said they have started scanning multiple offices in residential neighbourhoods in golf green bijoygarh new alipore salt lake jadavpur and barasat where they got leads about fake call centres operating from flatswe always undertake a sustained drive against fake call centres as and when we receive information about them after the recent exposure we have intensified the raids said another officer