Hyderabad Police here on Saturday busted a nine member investment fraud gang from Mumbai, Ahmadabad and Hyderabad. The Cyber Crime Police team brought to light Rs 712 crores investment fraud by Dubai-Chinese operators.
The arrested persons including 1) Prakash Mulchandbhai Prajapati, 2) Kumar Prajapati, 3)Naimuddin Wahiduddin Shaik 4) Gagan Kumar Soni, 5) Parveez @ Guddu,6) Shameer Khan, 7) Mohammed Munawar, 8 ) Shah Sumair, and 9) Arul Dassin, who were found in multi-crores investment fraud.
According to the Police, the complainant said that he was offered with a part time job of “Rate and Review” via telegram app, who believed it to be genuine and registered one in their website https://www.traveling-boost-99.com. Initially he was given simple tasks to give 5 star rating to one set of 5 tasks by loading, investing smaller amount of Rs 1000 and he earned Rs 866 profit from it.
Police clarified that when the victims loads, invests money the amount is displayed in a window like an online wallet, which shows options like Invest money, withdraw money, perform tasks etc. Next time, when he is given 4 sets of 30 tasks each to be rated, for which the victim has to deposit the money in the wallet and then will have to rate it. In the first set victim has transferred Rs 25,000 and earned a profit of Rs 20,000 in the website, but the victim was not allowed to withdraw the profit. When he asked about the delay in withdrawal they replied him to complete all the 4 set of tasks to get the profit.
“In the 2nd and 3rd sets, the victim was asked to deposit Rs 1-2 lakh, so as to get the profits earned by performing the tasks shown in the fraudulent wallet online. In the 4th set of 30 tasks, they introduced premium tasks for which, the victims had to load the wallet with around 25 lakhs. The victim completed the task with a hope to withdraw the profits. But the victim was asked again to deposit Rs 17 lakhs more as withdrawal fee to get back the entire amount including the deposited one. Thus, the victim was deprived from Rs 28 lakhs,’’ Police chief clarified.
“During the course of investigation it is found that Rs 28 lakhs that the victim lost had been transferred to 6 accounts including an account maintained in the name of Radhika Marketing and from there the money has been transferred to various other Indian bank accounts and finally in Dubai the fraudulent money was used to purchase crypto currency,’’ clarified, C.Anand, Hyderabad Police Commissioner.
Seized Articles:
17 Mobile Phones, 2 Laptops, 22 sim cards, 4 Debit Cards, Documents pertaining to 33 Companies, 3 Bank cheque books, 12 currency notes and 6 coins of Chinese Yuan currency and One Passport.
Modus Operandi of the offenders:
The arrested persons colluded with Chinese Nationals for easy gains by supplying bank accounts for a commissions of 2-3 per cent and give them the access to the accounts by providing internet login credentials and using remote accessing apps like COOLTECH and Airdroid and makes them to operate the accounts and once they succeed in looting the money from the victims into these accounts, they exchanges the INR into USDT (Crypto) and siphon the Indian wealth to China.
An amount of Rs. 10,53,89,943 has been frozen in the accounts and there are about 745 complaints in NCRP on the accounts supplied by the fraudsters throughout the country.
Caution:
Public have been cautioned not to believe in task based investment offers on Social Media platforms like Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, and other sources and not to invest an un authorized websites or through any other means, which lures high returns by investing little amounts by sitting at home.