Karnataka Police Bust Scam With Alleged Links To Chinese “Hawala” Operators

Karnataka police on Saturday arrested two Chinese nationals and seven others when bust a scam of over ₹ 290 crore that involved duping people through a mobile app after promising attractive interest on investment.

The scam, aided by shell companies, is linked to money laundering and the suspected kingpin is a Kerala-based businessman with proximity to Chinese “hawala” operators, they said.

Cyber Crime Division of Crime Investigation Department (CID) said it has arrested the accused – two Chinese nationals, two Tibetans and five others who acted as directors of the companies involved – and a search is on for the rest.

A complaint from Razorpay Software Private Limited said the accused availed “payment solutions” from them, claiming that they are in gaming, social and e-commerce businesses.

They, however, defrauded the company by using computer resources and by deviating from their original, registered line of business, the complaint said.

They started routing their transactions to collect payments from a different business named “Powerbank” – an app listed in Google Playstore, the cyber police said in a release.

Through customer complaints, the complainant company got to know that public invested money in the “Powerbank” app to earn interest on the invested amount.

The accused persons, after accepting the investments, neither gave the agreed interest nor the principal amount and cheated customers