The Enforcement Directorate has taken three accused, including a Chinese national, into custody for eight days in connection with an online betting scam case registered in Hyderabad. The accused were part of a network of app operators which is suspected to have committed a fraud of more than ₹1,000 crore.
The custody of Yan Hao, Dhiraj Sarkar and Ankit Kapoor was granted by a special court in Hyderabad. They were arrested by the ED on September 15.
The money laundering probe is based on an FIR registered by the Cyber Crime division of the Hyderabad Police in Telangana, against Dokypay Technology Private Limited and Linkyun Technolgy Private Limited and others.
The accused had floated a large number of websites and lured people to become members and place bets through various online apps, on the promise of attractive rewards on simple games of chance. The agents had created closed Telegram and WhatsApp groups to lure members and used referral codes to invite new members.
“It is suspected that these websites were also acted as payment aggregators for multiple apps which were banned by Google Play Store for lax technical security, data theft or betting activities. The accused companies were also planning to set up an NBFC for micro-credits, but their licence was declined by regulatory authorities,” said an official.
“Paytm and Cashfree were used to collect money and pay commissions to all the agent members. Hundreds of websites were created to promote online betting under the garb of e-commerce. The ED had earlier conducted searches at 15 locations in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai and Pune and also frozen four bank accounts with a total balance of ₹46.96 crore,” the official said.
The agency is in the process of identifying the major beneficiaries of the payouts from Paytm and the bank accounts. Summons have been issued to various persons, including the Chinese nationals who were the company directors.
The ED has so far identified about 100 websites through which the online betting applications were being operated. Some Chinese nationals, with the help of chartered accountants, had incorporated several companies using local dummy directors. They would later take over the directorship.
Local persons were hired to open bank accounts and trade accounts with online wallets like Paytm, Cashfree and Razorpay. Internet access credentials of these accounts were couriered to China, from where the beneficial owners were operating, according to the agency.
