The cybercrime wing of the Hyderabad city police arrested nine persons from Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, in what the police believe is a ₹712-crore countrywide investment fraud operated from Dubai and China.
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The police said preliminary investigations revealed that some amounts had also been transferred to Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terrorist organisation.
Thus far, the police have frozen various bank accounts worth ₹10.53 crore. As per the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), it has also identified that 745 complaints were registered regarding several accounts, allegedly supplied by the accused.
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Hyderabad city police commissioner C.V. Anand, addressing mediapersons on Saturday, said the police dug deeper while probing a complaint of investment fraud by a Chikkadpally resident, who lost about ₹28 lakh.
The victim had joined a ‘Rate and Review’ part-time job via Telegram app and registered himself on traveling-boost-99.com. Starting with ₹1,000 investment, for giving a five-star rating to a set of five tasks, and earning a profit of ₹866, the victim was lured to invest more in the online wallet, perform tasks and withdraw money. In further stages, he was asked to invest several lakhs, and in the final step, he invested ₹25 lakh for 30 premium tasks. However, he could not get back the amounts.
According to Mr.Anand, the amounts were transferred to six accounts, including one ‘Radhika Marketing’ maintained by Mohd. Munawar in Hyderabad, and its phone number helped find the trail. It was found that 61 bank accounts were opened for 33 shell companies. The same were sold to Prakash Prajapathi of Ahmedabad, who is reportedly associated with Lee Lou Guangzhou, Nan Ye, Kevin Jun and others from China. The accounts were being operated from Dubai and China through remote access apps such as ‘Cooltech’ and ‘Airdroid’.
For instance, the money received as investment gets credited to a primary shell/mule bank account supplied by Prakash Prajapati, then layered to a secondary bank account, and finally sent to the Chinese. The amounts were converted to USDT (crypto) and transferred, for which Prajapati earned a 3% commission on each transaction. Police said Prajapathi’s transactions with the Chinese involved an amount of ₹128 crore.
The nine arrested persons are Prakash Mulchandbhai Prajapati, Kumar Prajapati, Naimuddin Wahiduddin Shaik, Gagan Kumar Soni, Parveez alias Guddu, Shameer Khan, Mohammed Munawar, Shah Sumair, and Arul Dass.