The scope of the Bitcoin mining scam unearthed by the Matunga police continued to widen with almost 700 people found to be duped to the tune of ₹228 crore across the country, said police on Monday.
The entire conspiracy was premeditated and operated from Dubai and China and its operations were wrapped up in the span of just 15 days.
According to the police, the entire operation of actually duping people started in the first week of January when they sent bulk messages to over a crore people luring them with lucrative investments offers and in the next 15 days entire operation was stopped when they withdrew all the money from different bank accounts across the country.
However, the infrastructure for the fraud was being built over three months period including the opening of bank accounts in the name of shell companies and also launching different investments apps.
By the time different police agencies got a hint of it and started blocking bank accounts link to the scam, all the accounts were already emptied.
"Earlier we believed that people have been duped on the pretext of investments into cryptocurrency mining, however, the fraudsters have also lured people with Ponzi schemes and related apps were also launched in the open-source platforms," said PSI Rajabhau Garad.
On Monday, Navi Mumbai police officials approached the Matunga police after coming across a case of multiple people from a housing society who were duped on the pretext of investing in multilayer marketing schemes. Interestingly the victim's money was transferred to the same bank account from Delhi which was identified by the Matunga police in their case with a transaction of ₹189 crore in the span of just one month. The company is listed as a trading company.
The police have identified around 35 accounts that were used in the scam. In five main accounts, the victim's money was deposited including a bank account from Delhi which was registered in the name of a trading company. While rest of the accounts were used to distribute money from which the Indian accomplices of the mastermind withdrew it later. The money was later sent across the border through hawala channels, said police.
The Matunga police came across the case while investigating a case of a teacher who was duped to the tune of ₹2.47 lakh on the pretext of investing in Bitcoin mining.
In this case, police arrested one Mohammad Jabir (31) from Bengaluru who received the teacher's money in his account. In Jabir's account, a total of ₹71 lakh had been deposited of which he kept ₹12 lakh and passed the rest of the money to one Imran Riyaz who is at large. In Riyaz's account, a separate transaction of ₹84 lakh has been reflected which he already withdrew.
Riyaz had transferred the money to one Jimmy, a key person in the case also a suspected link to Dubai, said police.
The entire scam was suspected to be operated from Dubai and China as IP (internet protocol) addresses of WhatsApp numbers, Instagram accounts and email IDs linked with the banks were all operated from Dubai and China, said police.
To unearth the entire scam remained a challenge to the police due to the involvement of foreign links, added another officer.
