Three from Bengaluru held for running fake firms, cheating woman

Three CPUs, 24 rubber stamps of fake companies, 22 mobile phones seized

April 11, 2021 12:06 am | Updated 12:06 am IST - Hyderabad

The cyber crime police of Rachakonda on Saturday announced the arrest of three persons, including the manager of HSBC Bank, Bengaluru, for allegedly cheating people by creating and registering fake companies.

The accused, Ashok Kumar Arumugam (37), a consultant, and his colleague Sanjeev Kumar(23), acting company secretary at Hanuvel Consultant India Pvt. Ltd at Kanchi and Asim Akhtar (34), manager of HSBC at Bannerghatta Road, were developing fake online trading apps and cheating people through fraudulent transactions.

Police seized three CPUs, 24 rubber stamps of fake companies, 22 mobile phones and 14 bank account details and cheque books of those companies. Around ₹3.5 crore was frozen from various bank accounts.

Two weeks ago, a woman from Hayathanagar approached the Cyber Crime police stating that on February 24, she received a WhatsApp message from a Hong Kong based number explaining her about an investment and online trading app ‘Winbiz’. They told her that the app will provide huge profits everyday and asked her to download. Later, the fraudsters instructed her to recharge the app and she recharged for ₹500 using her ICICI bank account. After that, she was added in a WhatsApp group ‘strategy team’.

“Over a period of time, she invested ₹20 lakh in Winbiz app through several transactions between February 24 and March 15. She was shown a profit of ₹54,39,310.73 virtually, but when she tried to withdraw the said amounts, she found the withdrawal option and credentials blocked from Winbiz app,” police said.

After realising that she was cheated by the firm, the woman approached police and lodged a complaint.

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