New Delhi: The Noida and Chhattisgarh Police are investigating how a Dubai-based man, a native of Chhattisgarh, lured unemployed graduates looking to make quick money to manage an online betting racket running into thousands of crores via an app.
The graduates, most of them arrested over the past week, were running the operations from a bungalow in Noida using Mahadev Book app which enticed people to put money in online games, senior Noida Police officials told ThePrint.
The application would send text messages to people asking them to download it to make some quick money. Once a user downloaded the app, they would get connected on WhatsApp and asked to invest money to play betting games with the assurance of returns with a bonus once they win, according to the police.
The modus operandi of the app was such that when the users would bet with small amounts of money, they would get returns with bonuses, which would then make them put in higher amounts in the games. On betting with higher amounts, the user would always lose the money and their player ID would be blocked.
“(The app had) a central controller to which each culprit had access to. It was used to make a person lose whenever a higher amount was invested. The one with the central controller decided the movements in the game and even if the user was playing right, they would still lose,” explained Deputy Commissioner of Police (Noida) Harish Chander.
According to the police, the money made via the app was transferred to different accounts till it was siphoned off to a person named Saurabh Chandrakar, a native of Chhattisgarh who lives in Dubai.
The police believe Chandrakar to be the mastermind in the case, which they said had operatives in Pakistan, Nepal and Thailand, among other countries.
Multiple arrests have been made in the racket so far.
On Tuesday, the Noida Police nabbed a group of 16 men who had been allegedly running the racket from a three-storey bungalow in Noida’s Sector 108 for the past 45 days.
An FIR has been registered against the 16 accused under the Information Technology Act and under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating and dishonesty) of the Indian Penal Code.
The 16 men had locked themselves up inside the bungalow and had a laundryman and cook available for them all the time, said police sources, adding that they had acted on intelligence that a dozen men living inside the bungalow had not stepped out even once. A few officers were then told to keep an eye on the house.
Details about the men had also been given by the Chhattisgarh Police who were already investigating the case. The Chhattisgarh Police had earlier arrested nine accused from Greater Noida in the same case.
On Friday, one Sachin Soni, a native of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, was also arrested from his rented accommodation in Noida’s Sector 168. He is believed to be a key member of the gang and would look after its India operations.
The police said Soni had hired other people, mostly from Jhansi and nearby districts, to be part of the racket. “Soni and Chandrakar have known each other for a decade and together decided to run a racket to dupe thousands of people. Earlier, Soni had been running the racket in Jhansi before shifting base to the National Capital Region,” said a police source.
DCP Chander said: “Most of the suspects that we have arrested are not well-versed with the technology but are trained. They all are graduates who wanted to make easy money. Two of their accomplices are in Thailand and Nepal. We are investigating their movements.”
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The police said they expect the scam “to run into thousands of crores” as they investigate deeper.
During the probe, it was found that over Rs 500 crore had been made from the application’s users in just 45 days.
“We have recovered a trail of more than Rs 500 crore and are investigating the connections. Preliminary probe suggests that the Aadhaar cards, bank account details and identity details of the accused are all fake and that the documents were made with the help of some bank officials,” said a police official.
The police are now investigating how the money was siphoned off. Sources said around Rs 2 crore in different bank accounts had been frozen and that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) would soon take over the case.
According to the police, at least 12 of the accused had received training in Dubai for 22 days on how to run the racket and had then trained others in India.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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