15,000 Indians cheated of Rs 712 crore: How Chinese fraudsters lured victims into fake schemes

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Hyderabad police has arrested nine people across the country in connection with an investment fraud of Rs 712 crore by Chinese operators. According to the cyber crime wing of Hyderabad Police, the gang has cheated an estimated 15,000 people to the tune of Rs 712 crore. The fraudsters used to lure gullible investors through fake investment apps and schemes and later laundered money to China via Dubai after converting rupee to crypto, according to the police.

Some of the cryptowallet transactions in the fraud were found to have linkages with Hezbollah wallet (labelled as wallet belonging to terror financing module), a police release said. The fraud came to light after a Chikkadpally, Hyderabad, resident lodged a complaint. According to the victim, he was offered with a part time job of “Rate and Review” via telegram app, which he believed and registered in a website.

Initially, he was given simple tasks to give 5 star rating to one set of 5 tasks by loading/investing smaller amount of Rs 1,000 and he earned Rs 866 profit. Next time, he was given four sets of 30 tasks each to be rated, for which the victim needed to load the wallet with money initially and then to rate. The victim said he loaded with Rs 25,000 and earned a profit of Rs 20,000 in the website, but the victim was not allowed to withdraw the profit.

When he questioned, the fraudsters said that he has to complete all the four set of tasks to get the profit. In the subsequent tasks, he was asked to load with higher amounts with of Rs 1,00,000 and Rs 2,00,000 respectively and the profits earned by performing these tasks were shown in the fraudulent wallet online. The fraudsters later introduced premium tasks for which he had to load the wallet higher amounts.