Dark side of call centre industry growing

The family of 21-year-old Jignesh Verma sympathised with him. He had a stressful job at a call centre in Mira Road, they assumed, which required odd hours at work, engaging Americans in polite conversation and often turning a deaf ear to invective.

In reality though, Verma's work profile was the exact opposite. He was the one who shouted out threats, played on the fears of law-abiding Americans and robbed them of millions. And this earned him the tag of a "high performer'' and incentives in lakhs. His firm was running a phone scam, cheating US citizens by posing as the Internal Revenue Service, US equivalent of the Indian income tax department.

"Our performance was determined by how much we could scam. Initially, incentive was Rs 1 per dollar for callers like me and closers, who negotiated a settlement, earned Rs 2 per dollar. However, the bosses realised that the low salary and poor incentive was leading to higher attrition, so they revised incentives to Rs 2 for callers and Rs 3 for closers,'' Verma, now under arrest, has told investigators.

The Mira Road call centre racket, one of several busted in the country, was staggering in scale. Over 700 people in shifts on seven different floors; a hierarchical set-up in which job profiles were well defined; recruitment and training programmes, targets and incentives; and a work culture which stressed on "keeping your focus."

Most employees were paid Rs 15,000-20,000 but made a lot more in incentives. They worked the 7 pm-4 am shift and made 50-80 calls daily, of which about 3-5 would get "converted". Their victims were usually US citizens who paid up using pre-loaded cards for fear of



prosecution. "The magnitude of the scam is mindboggling and our guesstimate is in the last 12 months alone, they earned more than Rs 500 crore," said Thane police commissioner Param Bir Singh.

Around 70 people have been arrested so far while 630 are being questioned. Similar operations are under the scanner in nearby areas such as Nala Sopara, Vashi, Andheri, Malad, etc as well. However, the mastermind, a youth identified as Sagar Thakkar, remains elusive.

At this point, the plot is identical to the one that's unfolding in other parts of the country. In Ahmedabad, for instance, in the past two years, police has filed FIRs against seven call centres for various frauds, including one in which callers duped Americans or Canadians by promising them easy loans against paycheck advances. In each of these cases, police have arrested 10-15 persons, but the kingpin is yet to be found.

Gujarat police sources say some of the Mira Road calls were routed via Ahmedabad. Scam kingpin Sagar Thakkar is believed to have run two call centres in Ahmedabad which abandoned operations days ahead of raids in Mira Road.

An elaborate set-up was similarly uncovered in Noida last October. It involved three call centres, nearly 100 employees and 16,000 victims who were collectively swindled of at least Rs 15 crore. It was phone surveillance that unearthed the scam.

Triveni Singh, nodal officer of a special task force in UP, said fraudsters had made calls to 1.36 lakh people in various parts of the country to cheat them by posing as headhunters, insurers, or mutual fund managers. Noida, in fact, seems to be a start-up destination for sham operations.