Uttarakhand: Fraudsters sitting abroad cost Indians Rs 250 crore, made their victim like this
Traders (fraudsters) sitting abroad have duped Indians of more than Rs 250 crore through a mobile application. These thugs from abroad had lured people to double their money in 15 days. Acting on the complaint of three local (state) victims, ACF has arrested an Indian accomplice of the thugs. According to the STF, this case could be more than Rs 250 crore. In this case some people can be arrested after investigation now.
This is the biggest action of STF Uttarakhand in the history of cyber fraud. Disclosing this, Uttarakhand Police spokesperson ADG Abhinav Kumar said that Rohit Kumar resident of Shyampur and Rahul Kumar Goel resident of Kankhal Haridwar had made a complaint to the cyber police station. According to the complaint, both had downloaded an application named Power Bank from Google Play Store. In this investment application, it was claimed to double the money in 15 days. Due to this greed, both of them lost 91 thousand and 73 thousand rupees respectively.
In these cases, investigation was started by registering two cases in the cyber police station. Information about the bank accounts, online wallets in which the money was transferred was taken. It was learned that this money has gone to the accounts of ICICI and Paytm Bank through Roger Pay and PayU Wallet. Further investigation revealed that Paytm Bank account is a prime suspect account and is being operated by Pawan Kumar Pandey resident, Sector 99, Noida. Pawan Kumar Pandey, led by STF SSP Ajay Singh, was arrested from Noida on Tuesday. A case was also registered against Pawan Kumar under the Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ban Act.
50 lakh downloads, the app ran till May 21
According to the STF, in the initial investigation, it was found that this application named Power Bank was started in February 2021. This app remained in operation till 12 May 2021. Then suddenly it crashed. Till now a total of 50 lakh people had downloaded it. When the cyber police studied the financial transactions, it was found that more than 250 crore rupees have been cheated through this. According to the STF, this amount is expected to be 500 crores or more.
Indians get commission
In the investigation of STF, it has come to the fore that the strings of this entire fraudulent scheme are related to the traders of foreign countries. It was learned that some traders there befriend Indian investors and add them in the name of commission. Earlier this application named Power Bank used to provide online loan. Now by changing the way of crime, these people win trust and invest money by luring them to double the money. Only bank accounts and mobile numbers of citizens of India are used.
Initially some people got their money back
Initially, through this application, people were also refunded by increasing their money. After this the publicity was further increased through social media. After this, international organized crime spread throughout the country. Every day crores of rupees were being transferred from one account to another account and so forth. Doing this also confused the police.
25 more similar applications surfaced
The accounts used in the fraud are registered with the Registrar of Companies in the name of various fake companies. According to STF, a list of 25 similar mobile applications has come up. All these applications are engaged in suspicious activities. Information is also being collected about all these.