BHUBANESWAR: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Odisha police on Thursday said they have arrested the India head of a Chinese earning app involved in an online ponzi scam, officials said.
The accused, identified as S Chitravel, was arrested from Aviyur near Madurai in Tamil Nadu. He was brought to Odisha and produced before OPID Court at Cuttack on August 16 and was sent to police remand for five days.
“The mastermind of this scam is one Guanhua Wang, (40), a resident of Hangzhou, China. He, along with two other Chinese nationals (one male and one female), came to India in 2019 and stayed in Bengaluru for a few months. They created at least three shell companies based in Bengaluru to run different cyber-financial scams”, the EOW said in a statement.
“In one of such company, namely in ‘Bettec Technologies Pvt Ltd’, Chitravel was made director. During Covid, the trio went back to China, but continued running the scam through Chitravel and some other such hired directors and facilitators. Chitravel used to get Rs 1 lakh per month to run the illegal scam in India”, the statement added.
Earlier, as per the EOW, these people were running illegal digital loan apps. Law enforcement agencies started a crackdown against Chinese loan apps after many people were getting trapped and the government banned many such loan apps.
Chitravel used to supervise/manage the gang who used to threaten/ abuse and send the morphed porn pictures of loan victims and their family members/ friends/contacts, the statement added. After banning of loan apps, they started running earning apps, online betting and other app-based cyber-financial frauds.
During the inquiry, the EOW is said to have learned that money was being siphoned out of India in thousands of crores to China through these scams using multiple layers of mule bank accounts at lower levels, followed by current bank accounts of shell companies/hired firms, crypto traders and some dubious export-import firms. In some cases, small amount have also been withdrawn in cash in Dubai, the EOW statement said.
The EOW said it has frozen more than Rs 2.6 crore in various bank accounts in this case. (ANI)