Hyderabad cyber crime wing on Saturday said that they have arrested nine people in connection with the cryptowallet investment fraud of Rs 712 crore by Chinese operators. According to police, some of the cryptowallet transactions in the fraud were found to have linkages with a Hezbollah wallet (labelled as a wallet belonging to the terror financing module).
The arrested accused have been identified as Prakash Mulchandbhai Prajapati, Kumar Prajapati, Naimuddin Wahiduddin Shaik, Gagan Kumar Soni, Parveez aka Guddu, Shameer Khan, Mohammed Munawar, Shah Sumair and Arul Dass in an investment fraud.
Police seized 17 mobile phones, 2 laptops
The police also seized 17 mobile phones, 2 laptops, 22 sim cards, 4 debit cards, documents pertaining to 33 companies, 3 bank chequebooks, 12 currency notes and 6 coins of Chinese yuan currency and 1 passport from the alleged accused.
According to Hyderabad Commissioner CV Anand, based on the complaint lodged by Chikkadpally, a Hyderabad resident, the Cyber Crime Police had registered a case. The complainant said he was offered a part-time job to ‘rate and review’ via a messaging app. Believing it to be genuine, he registered on their website.
Complainant was given simple task to give five-star rating
Initially, he was given a simple task to give a five-star rating by investing a small amount of Rs 1,000 and he earned a profit of Rs 866. 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 is found that Rs 28 lakhs that the victim lost had been transferred to 6 accounts including an account maintained in the name of Radhika Marketing from there the money has been transferred to various other Indian bank accounts and finally in Dubai. The fraudulent money was used to purchase cryptocurrency.
Chinese masterminds were running this entire system
According to police, Prakash Prajapathi, a resident of Ahmedabad, was found to be associated with Chinese citizens Lee Lou Guangzhou, Nan Ye, Kevin Jun and others. He was coordinating with them by providing information about Indian bank accounts and shared the OTPs for operating these accounts from Dubai/China through remote access apps.
The police said that the Chinese masterminds were running this entire system of task-based investment frauds. They run these scams and lure the victims by sending messages over a messaging app.
The police found that Prakash Prajapati has shared over 65 accounts to the Chinese in which transactions to an amount of Rs 128 crores took place and the other accounts through which this fraud money has been converted to USDT, is having a volume of Rs 584 Crores totalling over Rs 712 Crores have been siphoned by these fraudsters.
(With agencies input)
