3 held for impersonating as Microsoft officials

New Delhi, April 25 (IANS) The police have arrested three youths, including two graduates, for impersonating as authorized representatives of Microsoft Corporation and extorting money from scores of schools here, a police officer said on Thursday.

Abhinav Jain, a resident of Saraswati Vihar, Ishan Garg, a resident of Alipur and Deepak, a resident of Suleman Nagar in the national capital, were arrested on Wednesday from Rohini Sector-8, the officer said.

"A Special Investigation Team of the Crime Branch headed by ACP Sandeep Lamba on a tip-off raided an office from where the accused were operating to extort various schools and later arrested them," DCP G. Ram Gopal Naik said.

Three hard disks, two printers, visiting cards of 'Microsoft Corporation', software of windows PRO 10, fake letters of Microsoft Corporation and mobile phones were recovered from them, Naik said.

"The accused disclosed that their accomplice, Abhinav Jain had a licence for selling Microsoft software and is an authorized education partner. To earn quickly, they all started forging letters of Microsoft Corporation and sent them to school managements. They also attached a Crime Branch complaint letter for threatening and extorting money from them. They wanted to force the schools to buy software in bulk from them," the officer added.

"The managements of over a hundred schools feared huge penalty and purchased the software in bulk from the gang. Several times, the accused sold the pirated software to schools. They used to visit schools impersonating as authorized representatives of Microsoft Corporation for checking the software of an institution," he said.

A complaint was made last week by Neeraj Kumar, an authorized representative of Microsoft Corporation, to the Crime Branch, alleging an unknown syndicate was misrepresenting as authorized agents of Microsoft.