Karnataka: Cyber crime sleuths bust Rs 290 crore money laundering scam, 9 accused held

The Cyber Crime Division of CID Karnataka has arrested nine accused persons in connection with a Rs 290 crore money laundering scam.

The Cyber Crime Division of CID Karnataka has arrested nine accused persons, including four foreign nationals, in connection with a major money laundering scam in the name of a power bank investment of more than Rs 290 crores. The team received a complaint from Razor Pay Software Private Limited alleging the accused persons were availing payment solutions from the company by representing that they are running a business in the gaming, social and e-commerce categories. They defrauded the company by using computer resources and deviating from their original category of business in which they had registered, and started routing their transactions to collect payments from a different business named “Powerbank”, an app listed on Google Play Store, read an official statement. Through customer complaints, the complainant company got to know that the public invested a certain amount in “Powerbank” app to earn some percentage of daily and weekly interest on the invested amount. The accused, after accepting the invested amount, neither gave the agreed interest nor the principal amount, thereby withholding the principal amount of their customers, which had resulted in cheating and deviating from the normal course of business.