noida thirtyone people including two main accused were arrested for running a fake call centre here that duped us citizens by assuring tax benefits police said fridaya team of officials from the crime branch the cyber cell and local police had thursday busted the fake call centre operating in citys sector63 areathe codirectors of the fake call centre identified as rajendra khalsa and abhishek bharadwaj both class 12 pass and natives of ahmedabad gujarat have been held superintendent of police crime ashok kumar singh saidtwentynine other men including 28 from the northeast and one from maharashtra who were working in the call centre were arrested he told reportershe said as many as 34 computer systems and other electronic gadgets besides 21 debitcredit cards were seized during the raidthe main accused khalsa and bharadwaj are in their late 20s while others are all adults and under 35 years of age police saidof the 29 workers most of them hail from nagaland while two are from manipur and one each from maharashtras palghar and uttar pradeshs allahabad they saidone of the key accused told the police during interrogation that they had hired workers from the northeast because of their english dialect which they found better to befool the targets they saidthe accused persons had gathered the data containing information about the us citizens and then call them up posing as representatives of the internal revenue agency ira of the united states federal government and dupe them in the name of tax reforms and benefits police saidthe accused would tell their targets things like they are under burden of services and loans and should pay some amount if they wanted relief under irs provisions they saidif the targets would not relent or fall in their trap the accused would even threaten them of legal action by the us government for tax violations police saidthose gullible and unsuspecting were asked to deposit money in the centres bank account by the callers according to the investigators police however did not specify the amount of money involved in the fraud or the number of victims but said the call centre would make transactions of around rs 1 lakh everyday an fir was registered at phase 3 police station and the accused booked under indian penal code sections 420 fraud and related offences besides the information technology it actnoida police had received complaints about such frauds on email from the us after which a raid was conducted by the joint team on the call centre which was active in the city for around three months nowthe action comes within days of another fake centre duping canadians and other foreigners being busted by the local policeon october 18 police had arrested the mastermind of the fake call centre operating from sector63 of the citythe accused in that case would pose as representatives of canada revenue agency cra which administers tax laws in the country to dupe people in the name of tax benefits police said