BHOPAL: Around 145 bank accounts held by ten companies registered in India are under scanner for allegedly being used by fraudsters to park and rotate money generated from investment frauds, cybercrimes and digital arrest.
Ongoing investigations into a major forex trade investment fraud racket (having international links), which was busted by the Madhya Pradesh Police’s Special Task Force (MPSTF) a few months back, led the sleuths to identify 145 bank accounts across the country.
The accounts were being held and operated by at least ten companies registered in different parts of India.
Transactions worth a whopping Rs 3200 crore were detected in those 145 accounts over the last eight-nine months, out of which around Rs 180 crore have been frozen/put on hold, as that sum is related to forex trade investment fraud case being probed by the MPSTF.
Continued investigations into the 145 accounts led to another startling revelation – at least 14 of those accounts had been used by cyber-fraudsters to park the proceeds of their crime in the same accounts.
The alleged cyber-crimes whose proceeds parked in 14 out of the 145 bank accounts (under MPSTF’s scanner) have come to light following 262 complaints made by cyber, job and investment fraud victims to police establishments of different states as well as the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs over the last few months.
Seven FIRs have already been registered in multiple states, among them Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Assam.
According to Special DG (MPSTF) Pankaj Srivastava, “The 262 complaints with various state police agencies and the MHA’s I4C pertain to cybercrimes involving around Rs 68 crore, out of which a significant sum was parked and routed through the bank accounts held by the ten companies registered in India, two of which are on our scanner in connection with forex trade investment fraud racket case.”
A Navi Mumbai-based woman who lost Rs 1.88 crore following digital arrest in November 2024, is among cyber, job and investment fraud victims, whose hard-earned money was parked in bank accounts which are among the 145 bank accounts held and operated by ten companies.
“Already probing our primary case which pertains to the BotBro-enabled forex investment trading fraud, our teams have also started now reaching out to the cyber, investment, job and loan fraud victims. We’ve already reached out to around 48 victims in different states, who were among those who made the 262 complaints with I4C and state police forces,” a senior MPSTF officer said.
Out of the 262 complaints received particularly by MHA’s I4C, maximum 91 pertain to investment frauds, 75 are related to share market investment/trading, 37 UPI fraud complaints, 11 are job fraud complaints, while six pertain to digital arrests.
As part of the continued probe into the major BotBro-Meta 5 Trading app-enabled forex trade investment fraud, which was busted by the MPSTF following an FIR after a Rs 20.18 lakh fraud complaint by an Indore-based young businessman a few months back, the MPSTF teams are already in multiple cities of UP, Haryana and Odisha.
These teams are particularly probing into the businesses of two of the ten companies whose accounts were largely used by the racket’s kingpin Nawab Khan alias Lavish Chaudhary (originally hailing from western UP, but possibly operating from the Middle East) and large network of fraudsters to make people from MP and other states invest huge sums in forex trading with the promise of returns spanning between 72% to 90%.
“Two of the main companies in whose accounts the forex trade racket’s players asked investors to invest sums to get benefits of the BoTBro and Meta 5 Trading App-based forex trading, have their corporate offices on a single floor in Noida and related offices in Haryana and Odisha,” a source privy to the ongoing probe said.
Aware of the fact that fraudulent designs have been exposed following the MP police action, the forex trade investment fraud racket’s operatives are now using social media platforms to tell their investors about switching over to alternative platforms like Bot Alpha.