Hyderabad police unearths investment fraud worth 16 crores
Hyderabad: Four men, 52 shell companies,16 crores worth money, 92 cases- these are the details that emerged from the investment fraud bust by Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police as revealed by Hyderabad police commissioner K Sreenivas Reddy on Monday.
The Hyderabad police stumbled upon this huge investment scandal during their probe into an investment fraud case involving Rs 3.45 lakhs. Going further into the details, the victim hailing from Hyderabad received a message including a link through instant messaging apps and was lured with high profit upon investing in stocks of an international investment company.
Falling prey to the same, when the victim clicked the link, it was automatically redirected to one platform namely Ucoin8. Through this platform they instructed him to invest and as per their orders, he invested a total Rs.3.45 lakhs in different Bank accounts. After realizing he got cheated the accused approached the Hyderabad cyber crime police and lodged a formal complaint.
The four accused – Mangilal Godara, Bhajan lal alias Bajan, Kamlesh Kumar alias Mahesh Kumar, Prakash Chand – arrested by police. The mastermind of the fraud Kamlesh Kumar is still at large.
“The four men colluded with Cyber fraudsters and cheated the innocent people by making them invest funds with an international investment under the name of Ucoin8. Initially the cyber fraudsters used to give smaller amounts as profit to make them believe. Then, they insisted the victims invest huge amounts, then they stopped responding to them,” said Hyderabad police commissioner K Sreenivas Reddy.
Investigation revealed that for committing these cyber frauds, the accused opened bank accounts by using fake ID proofs where they used their photographs, but KYC will be on others name. Further, they sold out those bank accounts at the rate of one lakh per account and 10% commission on each of the transactions carried out in those accounts to the absconding prime accused Kamlesh Kumar alias Kamlesh Fulanwala who cheats innocent people on the pretext of providing huge profit on investment and get deposit the amount into Bank accounts provided by them.
52 fake shell companies propped up
Initially the amount was transferred into one beneficiary bank account, on analyzing the Bank account technically identified 52 more fake shell company bank accounts in which total amount credited/defrauded is about 16 Crores out of which total amount of Rs.1.68 Crore has got frozen. “On the identified bank accounts, total 92 cases were registered in all over India, out of which 10 Cases were registered in Telangana State in which Hyderabad City has 03 cases and the defrauded amount is 21 Lakhs, Cyberabad has 05 cases and defrauded amount is one crore. And remaining 2 cases pertain to some of the districts of Telangana and the defrauded amount is about 30 Lakhs,” said Hyderabad police in an official statement.
The police have seized 25 cheque books of different accounts, 24 Debit cards of different Bank accounts, 12 mobile Phones, 6 Stamps of Shell companies, 141 grams of Gold ornaments and a Laptop from the accused. A manhunt is launched against prime accused Kamlesh Kumar alias Kamlesh Fulanwala.
Hyderabad police cautioned the public not to believe the fraudulent online websites and also not to invest in unauthorized websites or through any other means, which lures in the guise of high returns by investing little amounts by sitting at home
