Two men part of international investment scam held by Delhi Police

New Delhi, July 7

Two men were arrested in connection with an international cheating racket that induced people to invest online in wine and spice trade and duped them of Rs 25 crore, police said on Wednesday.

The men arrested have been identified as Nagaraju Karmanchi (31), a resident of Gurgaon in Haryana, and Kondala Subash (31), a resident of Secunderabad in Telangana, they said.

Several Indian SIM cards being used in this racket were found active in China, police said.

According to the police, a complaint was received wherein the complainant stated that he met a person, Soo Yeon Park, allegedly a South Korean national, on a dating app.

He was promised huge returns on his investment, and initially more than 20 percent returns were given to him in three to four days on his investment of Rs 5,000, they said.

The complainant said he was asked to visit and make an account on a website, a senior police officer said. The money he invested was deposited by accused persons in four separate accounts of different companies, including Golden Mark Technologies Private Limited, he said.

“On July 1, raids were conducted and Subhash, who was one of the directors of Golden Mark Technologies Private Limited, was arrested from Secunderabad and Karmanchi, who was in touch with Chinese nationals and also operated the bank accounts, was arrested from Gurgaon,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) R P Meena said.

Investigation revealed that Karmanchi created at least 10 different companies whose bank accounts were used by Chinese nationals. He was in touch with them and presently working as dummy director in an online short-term loan company whose real owners are Chinese nationals, the DCP said.

Karmanchi used to work as per directions of Chinese nationals and operated a number of fake bank accounts, police said.

Thirty mobile phones, seven laptops, fifty SIM cards, six debit cards, among others, were seized from Karmanchi and Subash's possession, they said.

Chinese nationals contacted people through social media. They assured a victim that financial markets in India are not good and if they want good returns for their money, they need to invest in wine or spice trade, police said.

The accused shared the uniform resource locator (URL) of their fake websites for investing money and asked victims to invest only a small amount. Initially, they would give good returns -- to the tune of 20 percent -- on these small amounts, the police said.

The victims invested more money and saw their returns grew multifold. They were asked to enroll for a membership to get more returns. If they wanted to withdraw money, they were asked to wait for a specific time or to take a specified membership, police said.

However, when the victims could not take out the money, they realised that they have been cheated, the police said, adding this way the victims were duped to the tune of Rs 25 crore.

It was revealed that the Chinese nationals hired people across India to set up companies so that they would be able to open current bank accounts with high transaction capacity, the police officer said.

If some bank accounts of the Chinese nationals were not functioning, they directed their men in India to purchase cryptocurrency. The money was also being routed out of India through shell companies, he said.

The members of this investment cheating scam are being identified and raids are carried out all over India to bust the gang, police said. — PTI 

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