The Matunga police, who arrested a man from Bengaluru in connection with a cyber fraud case, are shocked to have found transactions worth Rs 189 crore from an account used in connection with the fraud. This was one of the many accounts that had been used by the fraudster to circulate the more than Rs 200 crore earned by duping almost 240 investors countrywide, after luring them with offers of investing in crypto currency, said an officer close to investigation.
Police have identified 20 accounts used by the fraudsters to dupe people and found transactions amounting to more Rs 200 crore from these accounts. These accounts were either individual or in the name of shell companies, police said. One of the accounts from Delhi had recorded a transaction of Rs 189 crore between October 2021 and January this year.
On Friday, a team from the Matunga police station arrested one Mohammad Jabir, 31, from Bismillah Nagar in Bangaluru. Jabir, who has only studied till Class III, worked as a delivery boy with a leading food aggregator app until a few months ago but quit to start working with the gang.
According to police, Rs 71 lakh had been deposited in his account, of which he had kept Rs 12 lakh for himself and passed on the rest to one Imran Riyaz, a wanted accused.
It has become difficult for investigators to nab the masterminds of the gang as they have not left any clues and have used WhatsApp numbers most of the times, with a foreign IP (internet protocol) address for communication, while the accounts used in the fraud to route the money were also handled from foreign countries like Dubai and China, using VPNs (virtual private networks), making them difficult to trace.
According to police, the fraudsters had sent bulk messages to over a crore of people, making them lucrative investments offers in cryptocurrency mining. A link was also provided in the messages, which took the people to Play Store to download apps like Argo Hash and Argo Pro, a purported investment app.
‘Join India’s No. 1 Crypto Mining Apps You can earn upto Rs 2000/- Profit daily Guaranteed. Download & Get 50 now,” read the message.
After the app was installed, the fraudster would call the investors and asked them to invest in Bitcoins as much as possible, for maximum profits.
The teacher from Matunga who fell prey initially invested Rs 2,000 and soon, the profit was deposited in his account. Blinded by the initial profit, he ended up investing Rs 2,47,249.
The fraudster had created a group of 240 investors, each with investments ranging from Rs 25, 000 to Rs 20 lakh. On the group there were discussions about who had invested how much and had made how much profit, to draw further investment, an officer said.
Everyone received profits for 8-10 days; however, the app was suddenly removed from Play Store for ‘technical’ reasons and the group was deleted as well, leaving the investors with huge losses, police said.
