KOLKATA: A 36-year-old man from Tiljala Lane, who had earned himself the tag of crypto cashier and who was arrested last Tuesday, had been single-handedly converting foreign currency into Bitcoin and back for the past several months.
Iftikar Ali was the go-to man for fake BPO masterminds and was in charge of safe custody of money collected by duping foreign nationals.It took weeks of investigation by the FBI, and later, by Kolkata Police, to go through documents and call details to finally apprehend him.
During investigation, FBI came to know that Ali maintained aBinance wallet where a huge amount of fraudulently procured money was transferred.
FBI inferred that the accused persons duped overseas victims and discreetly diverted the looted money to their Binance account in the form of crypto currency, said DC (cyber) Atul V.
Cops then worked on the leads provided by FBI and a raid was conducted in the Karaya area.
Ali was picked up from Bondel Road and a cellphone was seized from him.
He admitted to have been involved in fraud, cops said.Alis role in such organized rackets first came under cop scrutiny after Danish Ahmed, a 29-year-old from Beniapukur who had been cheating US residents especially those at Baltimore for the past three years, was arrested near Circus Avenue on October 8.
During search, Rs 5 lakh cash and 13 wristwatches from various labels, like Michael Kors, Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange and Versace believed to have been purchased by the proceeds of crime were seized, Atul said.
This case was registered suo motu based on our inquiry after inputs received from FBI through National Central Bureau (NCB) India, Interpol, New Delhi.
Unclassified information sent on August 9 via a letter from the FBI legal attach, US embassy in New Delhi, stating that while investigating a call centre fraud, FBI sleuths have come to know that Ahmed, often posing as one Austin Parker, had cheated at least five US nationals between December 29, 2021 and March 3, 2022, and in February this year, said DC Atul.Cops said the scamsters posed as representatives of a software security firm, convinced the victims that their refunds were due, and, in the guise of helping them, would take control of computers and bank accounts to transfer funds.
Cops said Ahmed accessed his Bitcoin account on several occasions through the same IP addresses, sometimes hours or minutes apart, which Parker had used to call the victims.
The Bitcoin account was managed for Ahmed by Ali.Incidents took place in 2021 and 2022 with the calls originating from different places, including Panaji, Jadavpur and Gurgaon.
The FBI identified Ahmed and Ali as the masterminds of the all-India operations, said Atul.