Hyderabad Police have busted a Rs 712 crore investment fraud by Dubai-based Chinese operators, media reports on Sunday.

Police arrested nine people in connection with the incident on Saturday.

The fraudsters looted Rs 712 crore from thousands of victims across the country, Hyderabad city Police Commissioner CV Anand said in a press conference here as quoted by ANI.

Based on a complaint lodged by a resident from Chikkadpally in the city, stating that he was cheated by the fraudsters to the tune of Rs 28 lakh (task based investment offers), the cyber crime police registered a case.

During the course of the investigation, it is found that the victim has lost Rs 28 lakh which had been transferred to 6 accounts including an account maintained in the name of ‘Radhika Marketing’.

From there the money was transferred to various other Indian bank accounts and finally, in Dubai the fraudulent money was used to purchase cryptocurrency, he said.

This account in the name of Radhika Marketing was associated with a mobile number 8948013209, being maintained with Mohd Munawar, a resident of Hyderabad, the Commissioner said that up on enquiry, it is found that he along with Arul Dass, Shah Sumair and Shamir Khan (all from Hyderabad) went Lucknow on the instructions of Manish, Vikas and Rajesh ( all absconding), who all are residents of Lucknow, to open bank accounts on the names of ‘ shell companies’ being opened on their names with an offer of Rs 2 lakh per account.

They have opened 33 shell companies and 61 accounts in the name of companies and handed over the same to Manish, who hired Gagan for web designing of the companies and Nayeem to coordinate with the account holders, the CP said.

After opening the accounts, he sold the accounts to Kumar Prajapati, an associate of Prakash Prajapati, a resident of Ahmedabad who is associated with Chinese Lee Lou Guangzhou, Nan Ye, Kevin Jun, he said.

He coordinates with the Chinese masterminds in supplying Indian bank accounts and shares the OTPs for operating these accounts from Dubai/China through remote access apps COOLTECH and AIRDROID, Anand said.

The police commissioner also said the Chinese masterminds ( Lee Lou Guangzhou, Nan Ye, Kevin Jun) run this entire system of task based investment frauds .They are the ones running these scams and luring the victims by sending messages over Telegram.

When the Chinese loot the Indian victims the money thus defrauded is credited to Primary Shell/Mule bank accounts being supplied by Prakash Prajapati, layered to some secondary bank accounts to hide the proceeds of crime, but finally it has to be sent to Chinese masterminnds for this Prakash Prajapati then coordinates with his other associates, Arif, Anas, Khan Bhai, Piyush and Sailesh who are the residents of Mumbai, settled in Dubai in converting the fraudulently gained INR to USDT (Crypto) and transfer the same to Chinese, Anand explained about the modus operandi.

For every fraudulent transaction in these accounts Prakash Prajapati is paid 2-3 per cent commission, he said.

The Commissioner said Prakash Prajapati transfers part of his commission through A-ngdi (Hawala) to give the same to the account suppliers with the help of Kumar Prajapathi and major portion he routes it from China by importing electric bikes (Hawala) with the company named Ruxin International Company Limited.

It is observed that Prakash Prajapathi is using a Tron coin wallet address for getting his commissions to be paid in USDT or TRON.

This crypto wallet transaction in his wallet has crypto transfers to another wallet address, which in turn has been found to have transaction linkages with two other crypto wallets including Hezbollah wallet (labeled as wallet belonging to Terror Financing Module) and have been granted sanctions against the wallet in different countries, he said.

Anand said It is also found that Prakash Prajapati has supplied over 65 accounts to Chinese in which transactions to an amount of Rs 128 crores took place and the other accounts through which these fraud money have been converted to USDT, is having a volume of Rs 584 Crores totaling over Rs 712 crores have been siphoned by these fraudsters, the top police official said.

The police seized 17 Mobile Phones, 2 Laptops, 22 sim cards, 4 Debit Cards, Documents pertaining to 33 Companies, 3 Bank cheque books, 12 currency notes and 6 coins of Chinese Yuan currency and One Passport from the accused, he said.

An amount of about Rs.10.53 crore has been frozen in the accounts and there are about 745 complaints in NCRP on the accounts supplied by the fraudsters throughout the country, the CP added.

The arrested 9 accused persons -- Prakash Mulchandbhai Prajapati; Kumar Prajapati; Naimuddin Wahiduddin shaik; Gagan Kumar Sonil; Parveez @ Guddu; Shameer Khan; Mohammed Munawar; Shah Sumair, and Arul Dass -- are from Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

He appealed to the people not to believe task based investment offers on social media platforms like Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, facebook, and other sources and not to invest in unauthorized websites or through any other means, which lures high returns by investing little amounts by sitting at home.

(With UNI Inputs)