Hyderabad. Hyderabad Police has busted a major fraud racket involving Chinese operatives in which at least 15,000 Indians were duped of over Rs 700 crore in less than a year. Police said the money was sent to China via Dubai and some of it was also sent to an account operated by Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah.

According to a police release, the cyber crime police had registered the case on the basis of a complaint from a person resident of Hyderabad. The complainant stated that he was offered a part-time job for ‘ratings and reviews’ (certain tasks) through a messaging app. Believing it to be genuine, he registered on their website and became a victim of fraud.

According to the release, one of the persons arrested in this case was associated with some Chinese nationals. He coordinates with Indian bank accounts by sharing their information and shares OTP to operate these accounts from Dubai-China through remote access apps.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner CV Anand told NDTV, ‘We are alerting the central agencies in this regard and the Cyber ​​Crime Unit of the Union Home Ministry has been given details. It is quite shocking and surprising that even the highly paid software professionals have suffered a loss of Rs 82 lakh.

Anand said police suspect that a part of the money was converted into cryptocurrency and deposited into a wallet operated by Hezbollah. Nine people have been arrested in the case – four from Hyderabad, three from Mumbai and two from Ahmedabad – and police are on the lookout for at least six others.

The cyber crime branch of the Hyderabad Police started investigating the matter after being contacted by a person in April. The victim said that he has been cheated of Rs 28 lakh. Police found in the investigation that people were lured in the name of investment-cum-part-time-jobs. They were asked to do simple tasks, such as liking YouTube videos or writing Google reviews, and were paid for these tasks.

Investigators found 48 bank accounts created in the names of shell companies. At that time the agency believed that the fraud was of Rs 584 crore. Further investigation revealed that the scamsters had duped another Rs 128 crore. A total of 113 Indian bank accounts were used in the scam.

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Tags: cyber crimes, Hyderabad police, online fraud