Hyderabad – The Hyderabad Police has recently unearthed a fraud that involved 15,000 people and reportedly duped over Rs 700 crore in less than a year. Hyderabad Police Commissioner CV Anand in a presentation explained the modus operandi of the scamsters and said how they used the technology to dupe the people. The scamsters send messages to people to invest starting with small amounts. The complainant said he was offered a part-time job to ‘rate and review’ (certain tasks) via a messaging app. Believing it to be genuine, he registered in their website.
Subsequently, though the complainant had earned a profit of Rs 20,000 after investing Rs 25,000, he was not allowed to withdraw the profit. He was further made to invest money and he lost Rs 28 lakh in total.
During the course of the investigation, it was discovered that the victim’s loss of Rs 28 lakh had been transferred to six accounts, from which it had been moved to a number of Indian bank accounts before ending up in Dubai. The stolen funds were used to buy cryptocurrency.
One of the people who was detained in the multi-layered fraud was an Ahmedabad resident who was connected to several Chinese nationals. He collaborates with them by providing information on Indian bank accounts and sharing the OTPs needed to access these accounts remotely from Dubai or China, according to the press statement.
Additionally, it was discovered that one of the people who had been detained had given Chinese nationals access to over 65 accounts, where Rs 128 crore worth of transactions had been made.
According to a police press release, links between some of the cryptocurrency transactions involved in the scam and Hezbollah wallet—which is known as a wallet associated with the terror funding module—were discovered.
Based on a complaint made by a resident of Hyderabad, the Cyber Crime Police has opened an investigation.
He was initially assigned the straightforward task of giving a five-star rating while only investing a small sum of money (Rs 1,000), and he made a profit of Rs 866.
The nine defendants from Mumbai, Lucknow, Gujarat, and Hyderabad were allegedly connected to scammers from Dubai and China, according to Hyderabad Police Commissioner CV Ananda.
Prakash Mulchandbhai Prajapati, Kumar Prajapati, Naimuddin Wahiduddin Shaik, Gagan Kumar Soni, Parveez alias Guddu, Shameer Khan, Mohammed Munawar, Shah Sumair, and Arul Dass are the names of the arrested suspects in an investment fraud.
According to the announcement, the fraudsters have stolen over Rs712 crore from the other accounts through which the stolen funds were converted to United States Department of Treasury (USDT) cryptocurrency.
According to the police, the Chinese masterminds were in charge of the entire system of task-based investment frauds. By exchanging messages via Telegram, they carry out these schemes and seduce their victims.
In order to conceal the theft’s proceeds, Prakash Prajapati provided primary shell/mule bank accounts, which were layered with several secondary bank accounts. It was eventually delivered to the Chinese.
Arif, Anas, Khan Bhai, Piyush, and Sailesh, among others, who are residents of Mumbai and have resided in Dubai, were working with Prakash Prajapati to convert the money obtained fraudulently into USDT (Crypto) and transfer it to Chinese. Prakash Prajapati received a commission of 2% to 3% for each illegal transaction in these accounts.
The police also discovered that Prakash Prajapati provided over 65 accounts to the Chinese, where transactions totaling Rs128 crores took place, and that the other accounts used to convert this fraud money to USDT had a volume of ₹584 crores, which means that a total of over Rs 712 crores had been syphoned by these fraudsters.
