CBI charges 30, including two Chinese nationals, in cyber fraud case
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheeted 30 people, including two Chinese nationals, for allegedly cheating people during the Covid-19 lockdown in the name of investment, the agency said on Wednesday. The case pertains to HPZ Token Investment Fraud case, where Shigoo Technology Pvt. Ltd. entity owned and controlled by Chinese, cheated people during the Covid-19 lockdown. The accused launched a fake mobile application titled HPZ Tokens, claiming that investments would be used for cryptocurrency mining and would yield very high returns. Within just three months, crores were collected and diverted by the fraudsters. CBIs investigation revealed that this was not an isolated incident but part of a large, well-coordinated cybercrime network operated by foreign nationals. This syndicate was responsible for several cyber scams targeting Indian citizens in post COVID period using loan apps, fake investment apps and platforms offering bogus online job offers. CBI initially arrested six persons, namely Dortse, Rajni Kohli, Sushanta Behra, Abhishek, Mohd Imdhad Husain and Rajat Jain and has now filed a chargesheet against 30 accused, including two Chinese nationals, Wan Jun and Li Anming, who played key roles in directing the operations. Wan Jun was the director of a company Jilian Consultants India Private Limited, which was a subsidiary of a Chinese entity, Jilian Consultants. Wan Jun with the help of Dortse successfully created several shell companies including Shigoo Technologies. Investigation has revealed that these shell companies became the conduit to collect and launder the proceeds of crime of major organized cyber frauds. The total money that had been moved from the bank accounts of these companies surpassed Rs 1000 crore in period of few months. These frauds were connected and controlled by a single organised criminal syndicate based overseas, the CBI stated. During the probe, it was found that a very sophisticated use of payment aggregators. The payment aggregation systems had just taken off in India, and the payment aggregators were providing large collections and money disbursal services to genuine companies. The technology has allowed users to access a large number of bank accounts simultaneously. This well-structured payment system in India was misused by these fraudsters to launder the money at a high speed from the accounts of one shell company to another and also allowed them to partially disburse the money back to investors so as to gain their confidence. The Jilian Consultants had hired professionals including company secretaries (CA) to create several shell companies. The money so collected was then converted into cryptocurrencies before being sent out of the country. The agency has identified all the masterminds involved along with Wan Jun and has filed chargesheet against 27 accused persons and 3 companies.
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