Police Busts Huge Investment Racket, Arrests Three

The Cyberabad Police today nabbed a gang who had been duping people across the country using a fraudulent investment scheme.

The gang has reportedly cheated more than 20,000 people across India, and has earned about Rs 50 crore through their "investment scheme" so far.

Police have already recovered Rs 3 crore from ten bank accounts, four laptops and three mobile phones from the arrested persons. The funds in the ten accounts have been frozen.

Speaking on the matter, Cyberabad Commissioner of Police V C Sajjanar said that while three of the gang's members - Uday Pratap (41) and Rajesh Sharma (36) from Gurugram, Haryana, and Nitesh Kumar Kothari (36) from Dwarka, Delhi - had been arrested, two Chinese nationals, Zhang Hongwei aka Peter and Peng Guowei aka Javie, reportedly the brains behind the operation, were still at large, and that efforts to apprehend them were already underway.

"The gang would lure people to part with their money by promising huge returns on a fake investment scheme they called the 'Shared Bike and Sharing Economy' scheme. They would promise to provide a daily interest of 11% on the investments - they even claimed that the invested amount would more than quadruple in just ninety days. The tricksters would find investors through WhatsApp. To make their scheme look credible, they had opened several fake companies to help them carry out the fraud. These include Mobicentric Technologies, Techdig Fintech Private Limited, Corporfountain India Private Limited and Adstuck Consulting Private Limited, spread across Hyderabad, Delhi, Kanpur, Pune and Bengaluru. The gang had also created a website, www.ciciseo.com, which they had developed into an app on which to run the fraudulent scheme," Sajjanar said.

"The innocent investors, attracted by the promise of high returns, fell prey to the scheme and shared their personal and bank details, and paid their deposits through the Razorpay payment gateway. They would be required to make the payment by visiting the link provided to them on their registered mobile numbers. Though some investors were apprehensive towards the beginning, when they started receiving returns on their deposits, they began to recommend the scheme to their family and friends. This is how the gang was able to make so much money," he added.

The commissioner also urged the people of Telangana to be careful about such investment schemes and advised them to refrain from making hasty investments.

He also requested them to immediately inform the police if any companies with similar schemes approached them at any time.