German police might quiz city fraudsters for duping over a 1,000 Germans

The five fraudsters arrested by West Bengal Police's CID for allegedly duping several foreign nationals in the name of providing online technical support, might be interrogated by the German police officials who arrived here on Monday, a CID official said.

According to the data provided by the German officials, the fraudsters, who have been kept in CID custody for the last 62 days, cheated more than a thousand German citizens between 2012 and 2016 through their company Snow Blue, based in the city's Salt Lake area.

"The German officials would make a prayer to interrogate the accused as altogether 1,024 German citizens were cheated by the company and paid large amounts to get their computers fixed," an officer from CID's cyber cell told IANS.

"CID has also made a prayer at the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court in Bidhannagar on Monday to interrogate the five accused after receiving the data from the German police authority. It seems there has been a fraudulence of lakhs of euros by the company," he claimed.

The official said the racket including four men and a woman was busted after the CID sleuths received an information from the Interpol alleging that several people from Germany, Sweden and a few other European countries were cheated by a city-based company that charges hefty amount in the name of providing Microsoft authorised technical support.

"The company used to call up people from other countries illegally using the name of Microsoft and charge them exorbitant amounts for servicing their computers. When we tracked the money trail we found a lot of money came to their account from European countries through Bahrain. The five were arrested on June 7 this year," the officer said.

A team from Germany led by a public prosecutor and senior police official reached Kolkata on Monday morning. They praised the role and efforts of CID in relation to the case.

"This is a very big case in Germany. The cooperation (of the CID) is very good. They are very competent, enthusiastic and have a done a good job. We appreciate this cooperation," a German official said.

--IANS

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