New Delhi: Having zeroed in on Ashok Kumar Sharma, a chartered accountant, as the ‘mastermind’ of a massive cyberfraud racket that involved multiple shell companies and cross-border money transactions, a team of Enforcement Directorate officials raided his farmhouse in Delhi’s Bijawasan area Thursday.
But as the officials entered, Sharma and his brother attacked them by hurling wooden chairs and escaped. Two officials were injured in the incident.
The CA and his brother were under the scanner of the federal probe agency for allegedly defrauding the public in the name of jobs and investments, and transferring the funds to the United Arab Emirates.
Sources in the ED consider it a “one-of-a-kind” case because of the scale of operations, which the agency claims to have unearthed by means of inputs from the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND).
“We received information from the FIU about use of mule accounts at a widespread scale to receive and transfer defrauded funds out of India. Deeper analysis revealed the involvement of 1,000-1,500 such accounts,” an ED official told ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
FIU is the central agency that performs the role of receiving, processing, analysing and disseminating information about suspected financial transactions to enforcement agencies and their foreign counterparts.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South West Delhi) Surendra Chaudhary said Thursday that based on the ED official’s complaint, a case has been registered against Sharma and his brother under Sections 221 (obstructing public servant in discharge of duty), 132 (assault or criminal force against a person without serious provocation), 121 (1) (voluntarily causing hurt or grievous hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 351 (3) (criminal intimidation), and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The police have also arrested one Yash as part of the probe in the case, the DCP said. Sources in the police have identified him as a relative of Sharma, who was present at the spot, where offence was allegedly committed.
‘200 shell companies’
According to sources in the ED, the CA and his brother were directors of nearly 200 shell companies used for receiving money from the public in exchange for the promise of jobs or investment.
The officials further explained that Sharma was the “kingpin” of the operation, under which they allegedly propagated ads and promotional posts with fake offers. “They used to seek application fees, starting from Rs 1,000 and running into several thousands, which used to be deposited into these mule accounts,” an ED official explained.
The officials said that Sharma and his associates had also incubated an application, where people were asked to register with all their details. Apart from attracting money from people in the name of jobs, this “syndicate of CAs” used to garner investments on the pretext of sky-high returns, they added.
People working in the module had managed to get ATM-cum-debit cards for the mule accounts to facilitate transfer of funds from the bank accounts to Abu Dhabi-based payment aggregator, Pyypl.
“Funds defrauded from the public were routed through the Pyypl payment app, withdrawn in Dirham and subsequently used for purchasing cryptocurrencies and other investment avenues,” an official told ThePrint.
Pyypl was incorporated in 2017 and is regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) public-register of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). It claims to have a user base of over one million.
ED officials said that there are cases related to fraud committed by Sharma and the other CAs, including one by the Central Bureau of Investigation. However, the agency zeroed in on him and his location based on the analysis of accounts used by him for the purpose of running the racket.
The sources added that despite the attack on the officials at Sharma’s farmhouse, the agency has managed to recover incriminating materials, such as ATM cards and cheque books of the mule accounts, in addition to PAN cards and rubber stamps, which were being used for documentation purposes for the bank transactions.
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