Hyderabad police busts 171 investment frauds operating from foreign soil
Hyderabad: The scheme devised by cyber fraudsters – operating from foreign soil, colluding with a former employee of a private bank, employing persons to open fake bank accounts, preying on people with investment schemes – was devious. The appalling details emerged after Hyderabad police busted an investment fraud. The police claimed to have solved 171 cases registered all over India including 11 cases were registered in Telangana State.
Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police arrested four accused persons- Krishan Dhaka, Manoj Kumar, Ashutosh Raj and Munish Bansal all hailing from Delhi and Rajasthan.
Police jumped into action after receiving a complaint from a victim hailing from Hyderabad claiming to have lost one crore in an investment fraud. Going further into details, the victim was contacted by Cyber fraudsters through an instant messaging platform and impersonated as employees of M/s Patheon venture company and informed that they are hiring some people for trading and they created a trading account for him and then they added him in the messaging platform group. They made him install an application PT-VC from Google play store. He was told to purchase the IPO stocks that are going to be listed. He used to deposit in those accounts provided by them and he was told to keep hold of those stocks for 30 days to earn good profits. Initially the cyber fraudsters used to give smaller amounts as profit to gain trust. Then, they insisted the victims invest huge amounts and then they stopped responding to them. The complainant has transferred a total amount of One crore. Subsequently he approached Hyderabad cyber crime police for help.
Private bank employee colluded with fraudsters
Explaining the Modus operandi Hyderabad police commissioner K Sreenivas Reddy said, “The accused Ashutosh Raj, who is ex-employee of IDFC First Bank used to help Krishan Dhaka and Manoj Kumar in opening the fake current bank accounts in different banks through his known bank officials. Munish Bansal along with his friends Gourav Chowdary and Giridhar used to open fake current bank accounts in different banks and colluded with Cyber fraudsters and supplied many fake bank accounts to cyber fraudster who stay in abroad countries and cheat the innocent people by investing funds with an international investment under the name of Aditya Stock Sharing VIP”.
Probe revealed that the accused persons sold out the bank accounts on commission basis on the transactions carried out in those accounts to the absconding prime accused who are in other countries who cheat innocent people on the pretext of providing huge profit on investment and get the amount deposited into the Bank accounts provided by them, said Hyderabad police.
Preliminary investigation analysis revealed that Initially amount transferred into one beneficiary bank account, on analyzing the bank account technically identified 24 more fake shell company bank accounts in which total amount of Rs.22 lakhs was credited/defrauded, on those bank accounts total, a total of 171 cases were registered in all over India, of which 11 cases were registered in Telangana State in which Hyderabad City has four cases and the defrauded amount is 1.43 Crores, Cyberabad has four cases, Rachakonda has one case, remaining two cases pertains to other districts of Telangana.
