Bengaluru North Division CEN police bust online investment racket, arrest 10 people

North Division cybercrime police bust international investment fraud racket, arresting gang of 10, including engineering students, operating from Dubai.

Following a case of online investment fraud, the North Division cybercrime police busted an international racket and arrested a gang of 10 people, including unemployed engineering students and graduates working on a commission basis for the kingpin, operating from Dubai.

Based on the complaint of a person who was cheated of ₹88 lakh through online investment fraud, the police tracked down the accused and raided their offices in Thyagarajanagar and Sadashivanagar and recovered 51 mobiles phones, 480 SIM cards, 330 bank accounts, QR codes, 30 debit cards of different banks, and laptops from them.

The accused have been identified as Srinivasa Reddy, 43, Akash G.M., 27, Prakash, 43, Sunil Kumar, 43, Sai Prajwal, 38, Ravi Shankar, 24, Madhusudhan Reddy, 41, Suresh V, 43, Kishor Kumar, 29 and Obul Reddy, 29.

Police said the accused were hired online by the kingpin, offering them work-from-home jobs and assigning different roles on a commission basis. While some of the accused were tasked to get mule accounts, the others were instructed to facilitate transactions and ensure mobile phones and bank accounts where the money is transferred are active. The accused were offered ₹40,000 commission for every ₹1 crore transaction to an account, the police said.

Explaining the modus operandi, the police said that the accused would make calls to lure gullible people by offering them high return-on-investment in the shortest period of time. Once the victims agreed, they would share a link and add them to an app, allowing them to invest. When the victims would see their investment doubling within few days, they would be lured to investment more, however, they wouldn’t have access to withdraw their investment.

While verifiying the seized documents, it was found that the accused were involved in over 1,147 cybercrime cases of which 15 cases were related to the city, the police said. The police have remanded the seven accused to judicial custody while three of them have been taken into police custody for further investigation.

During the raid, the prime accused tried to contact their associates over a Whatsapp call and realised that they have been arrested when the call went unanswered. According to a technique adopted by the accused, if no one answers even after two calls, they will delete the conversations and call details and withdraw money from all the mule accounts, the police said.