Hisar: Online gaming app fraud busted, 3 held

Tribune News Service

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, June 23

The Hisar police have busted a gang cheating people through mobile game applications. The criminals used to lure people to earn money by placing bets and by adding more people to these apps.

Players asked to predict right colour

• The accused used to lure people to play online betting games via apps like RXCE, Mantrimaal, Ullumaal, WinzoPro, ColourPrediction which are known as win money apps.
• These subscribers used to place bets on these apps and the winners were offered double the amount of the bet. The app told subscribers to place bet on which one of the three colours being shown will show up in the game after three minutes.
• The administrators of the game used to show the colour which had the lowest bid and thus people who had betted on two other colours lost money.
• The fraudsters also formed tutorial groups of Telegram app and invited the subscribers of these mobile gaming apps to join these groups to learn how to win at the games.
• As they knew in advance which one of the three colours would show up, they used to lure people by predicting the right colour and used to get commission from the winning amount.

The police nabbed three persons — two from Gujarat and one from Jaipur in Rajasthan — and traced a bank account which had a transaction of Rs 300 crore.

Superintendent of Police (SP) Lokender Singh said here today that this fraud is suspected to be of several thousand crores of rupees and is running across several states. He said that with the initial inputs, they had traced 7-8 persons who have fled to Dubai. He added that the money duped from people could be used in terror funding.

The SP said that they got to know this during a probe in a case of fraud registered on the complaint of a Hisar resident, Chander Shekhar, on May 17. He was duped of about Rs 20 lakh by this online racket.

The SP added that following the trail, they arrested three persons — Sachin Gudalia of Surendra Nagar in Gujarat, Pintu Rajpoot of Ahmedabad and Akash Sharma of Jaipur — on June 17. The police had also recovered Rs 3,52,500 in cash from them. They also got a bank account having Rs 1.38 crore seized.

Revealing the modus operandi, the SP said that the accused had been luring people to play online betting games via apps like RXCE, Mantrimaal, Ullumaal, WinzoPro, ColourPrediction which are known as win money apps. They reached out to people via online advertisements and offered incentives to a subscriber who got more people connected through their app links. They used to take Rs 1,000 via digital mode of payment and promised Rs 80 per day for three months. The subscriber who connected more people was offered additional incentive.

Lokender Singh said that one account of Sachin Gudalia had a transaction of Rs 300 crore from January to June. “This account has credited money from across the country. Significantly, the operator of this account used to withdraw money in cash. One-time withdrawal is as high as Rs 50 lakh which also casts doubt on how the bank concerned overlooked the withdrawal of such a huge amount,” the SP said.

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