Kolkata: City call centre girl pulls off $4000 cyber fraud for 'fun'

[ 2 Sep, 2006 1131hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

KOLKATA: Sulagna Ray hardly looks like a criminal. But both the detective department and the CID were hot on the trail of this 23-year-old call centre employee. She was arrested on Friday morning from her Behala home for using credit card details of US consumers to buy goods worth $4,000 (Rs 1.8 lakh).

Sulagna has been charged with fraud and cheating. She has “confessed” but claimed that “she did it for fun and didn’t intend to cheat anyone”. A city court has remanded her in police custody for 12 days.

"A California-based firm, Syssoft Corporation, informed us that they do e-commerce in Kolkata through a portal, calcuttaweb.com. It was flooded with complaints about fraudulent purchases being made through this site during July-August. We were also told that all these purchases were made through credit cards of US residents. The American firm had to pay compensation to all the credit card holders," DC (DD) Gyanwant Singh said.

Sulagna, who has just completed her diploma in fashion designing from NIFT, works in a Salt Lake Sector V call centre — Jaishree Infotech. Her call centre does the back-end operations of another e-commerce site in the US. "Her job involved selling Dish TV to US clients. While doing this, she gathered information about the credit card numbers of some of these clients. She then used these card numbers to make purchases through calcuttaweb.com," said a senior officer.

Sulagna made 52 purchases on the internet, some using her laptop and some from cyber cafes (she never used her office computer). Forty-two items, worth about Rs 1 lakh, were delivered to her home. These included an air-conditioner, microwave, cosmetics, jewellery, saris and even chocolates.

For the detectives, tracking her down wasn’t tough. Calcuttaweb.com, which has an office in Kolkata, provided them with the details of purchases made. "The IP addresses were all logged. Moreover, the delivery challans gave her game up," an officer said.

Sulagna's mother Nivedita, the police said, should have known what her daughter was up to. She earned only Rs 8,000 but was splurging. However, they did not question her mother, who is ailing. Her father Niladri, who worked in a Haryana-based firm, is dead.

Meanwhile, in another e-commerce fraud case, detective department officers arrested the owner of Mumbaibased e-portal NS Shopmart. Sidhartha was picked up from Dadar for cheating Supriyo Ray, a Barasat resident. Supriyo had purchased an LCD monitor from rediff.com for Rs 15,000. A carton reached his home a few days later but it was stuffed with paper. The police later found Sidhartha’s portal made the transaction through rediff.com. He was brought back to Kolkata.