HYDERABAD: Five persons, who duped around 1,200 people to the tune of `10 crore on the pretext of investing money on a fraudulent cryptocurrency, were arrested by the Task Force sleuths on Friday. The police have seized material worth of `1.80 crores from the accused.
The arrested persons are G Ramesh (46), a resident of Bowenpally; S Sathaiah (53), fitter cum mechanic in Singareni Collieries; N Venkatesh (33); K Hari Gopal (31), trade exchange businessman; and Ch Sriniva.
City police commissioner Anjani Kumar said that the key accused Ramesh, who has indulged in similar offences previously, hatched a plan to gain easy money and designed a portal called coinxtrading.com, with the assistance of a Mumbai-based IT company CB Online. The portal claimed that the accused’s office is located at the World Trade Centre, New York, though his business operates from UK and other countries as well.
“Ramesh hired the other accused and directed them to attract customers to invest in their ‘multi level marketing’ business. For this purpose, Ramesh offered a commission of 10 per cent. They offered a ‘basic plan’ where if the customer invests 100 USD, he gets a commission of 0.4 % per day for 500 days. If the customer invests $500 as per their ‘standard plan’, he will get 0.5% per day for 400 days. According to ‘elite trade plan’, where the customer invests $5,00,000, he gets a bonus of 10% in addition to 1.5 % returns per day The customers who realised that they were duped lodged complaints.