AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s cybercrime sleuths have busted a multi-crore online betting and stock market fraud disguised as an e-commerce business in Surat.
The crackdown exposed a Rs 20.08 crore racket spread across 43 bank accounts, with links stretching from Gujarat to Maharashtra, Goa, and online betting syndicates like Mahadev and Lotusbook.
The kingpin, Meet Shah, and his network were caught running a sophisticated scam involving fake companies, rented bank accounts, and bogus franchises.
The raid on Katargam’s Lakshmi Enclave office blew the lid off the operation when a man was caught red-handed while handing over a bank account to accused kingpin Meet Shah.
Under interrogation, he led police to Meet’s residence in Amroli, where Meet, along with aides Yash and Rishikesh, was found surrounded by laptops, piles of mobile phones, and bank-related documents, a full-fledged cyber fraud hub.
Police seized 24 phones, 3 laptops, 20 debit cards, 3 credit cards, 19 passbooks, 22 chequebooks, ₹1.95 lakh cash, 3 routers, 29 rubber stamps, along with forged PAN and Aadhaar copies, signalling a highly organized racket.
Meet confessed that he rented bank kits, created online usernames and passwords, and then sold access to betting syndicates.
He ran his operation in Katargam, while his associates Jignesh and Jitendra operated a parallel fraud centre from Sarthana Rajvi Shopping Centre, posing as an e-commerce setup with a ₹6,000 monthly rent, which was 'actually a reality used to funnel money from online gaming scams.
Investigations revealed Meet’s direct link with Karan Desai of Ahmedabad, who paid him ₹80,000 monthly to manage fund transfers.
The racket also had ties to notorious online betting platforms like Lotusbook, Ready Anna, Jannat Fair Play, and Mahadev, with funds being routed through bogus franchises like Livopa Live, where Meet worked under Franchise Number 155.
Meet also employed Yash and Rushikesh from Maharashtra, paying them ₹25,000 each, to handle sensitive tasks like entering bank details and cash withdrawals.
The probe widened when Nilesh, a cloth broker, was nabbed at the airport. Nilesh supplied fake bank accounts to Meet, earning ₹25,000 per account.
He admitted to providing 17 accounts, including two of his own and others sourced from friends Harsh, Vivek, Nikin, and Ravindra. In another shocking revelation, Jignesh admitted to creating 12 shell companies with his partner Jitendra over two-and-a-half years.
These fake firms opened multiple current accounts, enabling the duo to siphon off ₹1.35 crore in the guise of e-commerce and gaming transactions.
A deeper dig into the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCCRP) linked this racket to 67 fraud complaints, involving fake investment schemes, job offers, and online shopping scams, with Rs 7.96 crore siphoned off.
Complaints spanned across Maharashtra (11 cases), Gujarat (6), Uttar Pradesh (3), Haryana (3), Madhya Pradesh (3), and Delhi (2), reflecting the nationwide scale of the network.
The cybercrime branch is now tracing money trails and digital footprints, as this multi-state cyber mafia appears to have strong connections to betting cartels and financial fraud networks that thrive on laundering illicit online funds.