Hyderabad: The Rachakonda police arrested three interstate accused from the Siliguri district of West Bengal for duping Rs 86 lakh from people in the name of online crypto trading.
According to police, four people are involved in the crime and the accused are identified as Deepu Mondal who is still absconding, 23-year-old Nuralam Haque a bank employee, 24-year-old Ijarul and 23-year old Ekram Hussain.
The accused Deepu Mondal used various names of shell companies that never existed in real time and fleeced money in the name of investments from people. The accused Nuralam Haque is a friend of Deepu Mondal.
Both opened 64 different bank accounts and procured various SIM cards in the names of illiterate villagers with the help of Ijarul and Ekram Hussain who helped in procuring the id credentials of the said villagers by offering them petty commissions, and collected their ATM Cards, cheque books and internet banking credentials, and used them for crediting of the fraudulent amounts that got transferred from the victims, stated police.
Meanwhile, Deepu and Nuralam contacted the victims using various virtual numbers and lured them and made them deposit money into their various accounts in the name ‘crypto investments’. Once the money got credited into the said accounts, the accused used to purchase Cryptocurrency through an app called ZEBPAY.
The accused in the month of September contacted Bhanothu Kiran Kumar through WhatsApp using virtual numbers and lured him to invest in crypto investments. Believing which first he invested Rs 50,000 and got a profit of Rs 10,000, later they convinced him to invest in huge amounts for getting huge profits and fleeced to a tune of Rs 86 lakh from him and thus cheated.
Based on the technical evidence, police on October 30 left to Islampur in West Bengal and on November 3, the police traced Ijarul and then from his inputs the intelligence officer and team went to Siliguri and arrested the other three accused and took them to Matigara police station of Siliguri. After completing the legal formalities, the Rachakonda police bought all three accused to Hyderabad and produced before the court. The court then sent them to judicial remand.
At the time of arrest, police seized five mobile phones, six SIM cards, three bank cheque books, six ATM cards of different banks and froze Rs 50 lakhs in accused bank accounts.