Online betting racket busted, five arrested

The Ludhiana police busted an online betting racket. Suspects had been duping people under the guise of betting on illegal gambling sites. Five suspects were arrested by the police and the mastermind of the racket is said to be in Dubai.

SSP Ludhiana (rural) Ankur Gupta said the police busted a gang of illegal online gambling sites and arrested five persons, Abhinav Garg (24) of the college road area in Barnala; Om Prakash, alias Om (29), of Gautam Budh Nagar, Noida; Amritraj, alias Amrit (28), of Nalanda, Bihar; Vishwajit Singh (36) of Jalesar, Uttar Pradesh; and Rihan Khan (25) of Kushinagar, who were collecting money under the guise of betting on illegal sites.

Gupta said the suspects were involved in online illegal betting through illegals sites — parimatch.com and mostbet.net.in — where they convince the people to deposit huge amount of money with the lure of winning and fake bank accounts were opened to transfer the money. Daily transactions of crores of rupees were being made in these accounts, which were further forwarded to owners of the sites in the form of cryptocurrency.

The SSP said key persons behind the racket used to distribute commission in the form of cryptocurrency to the suspects arrested by the police. After arresting the suspects, eight mobile phones, eight SIM cards to operate bank accounts, two cheque books, a laptop and a Tata Altroz car (bearing registration number UP IGFC 6317) were recovered from them.

The suspects during interrogation said Om Prakash was the main leader of the gang, who used to provide different accounts for transactions worth crores for many sites every day. He also used to come to small cities to open the accounts and mostly operated them in big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai and the money earned through fraud was sent to Dubai and Philippines, etc. through cryptocurrency, he claimed.

“The case is being investigated to find out how many other members are associated with the gang and involvement of any bank official, etc. The suspects have been produced in a court on Saturday, which remanded them in police custody for six days,” Gupta said.

Avoid online illegal sites: SSP to people

The SSP appealed to people to avoid such online illegal sites offering easy money and said strict action will be continued against those who commit cyber and financial frauds.