Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) has unravelled one of the biggest cyber fraud cases involving cheating of approximately Rs 250 crore. STF has also arrested an accused from Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
The financial fraud of such a huge amount has been executed in a span of just 4 months. The STF has revealed that the fraud has been carried out by an app namely ‘Power Bank App’, which has been under China’s startup scheme. In India, over 50 lakh people have downloaded the app, which lured people to double their money in just 15 days.
“In one of the biggest cyber fraud cases unraveled by Uttarakhand STF related to the POWER BANK app loaded on Google play store with millions of downloads. The modus operandi is using Indian registered companies as shell companies for money-laundering to the tune of approx Rs 250 crore,” Uttarakhand Police tweeted.
https://twitter.com/uttarakhandcops/status/1402276760885080084?s=20
The STF of Uttarakhand Police is now investigating the matter in detail to nab more members of the gang who were involved in the cybercrime. The app named Power-Bank was made available on Google Play Store in February 2021.
According to Police, fraudsters asked people to download the ‘Power Bank App’. People were told that their money will be doubled within 15 days. This was going on for four months. The matter came to light after a Haridwar resident filed a police complaint stating that he had deposited Rs 93,000 the first time and Rs 72,000 the second time in the ‘power bank app’ to double the money in 15 days. However, this did not happen and he filed a complaint of fraud at a police station.
The police investigated the matter and it came to light that the depositors’ money was transferred to different accounts. The police investigated all the financial transactions on the app and confirmed that fraud happened to the tune of approximately Rs 250 crore.
Uttarakhand STF SSP Ajay Singh said that the online gang of fraudsters also involves people sitting abroad who used to talk about giving loans to the people through the app by luring the Indian businessmen with a commission. People started downloading the app and depositing money on the app. To maintain people’s faith and to keep them in the lurch, their deposits were also increased and refunded for some time initially.
STF has arrested one accused who has been identified as Pawan Pandey. The STF has recovered 592 SIM cards, 19 laptops, 5 mobile phones, 4 ATM cards and 1 passport from his possession.
Dehradun ADG Abhinav Kumar said that the information about this online fraud case has been shared with other investigative agencies including IB and RAW.
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