Odisha Police arrests India head of Chinese earning app from Tamil Nadu
Aug 17, 2023
Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], August 17 : The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha Police on Thursday said it has arrested India head of Chinese earning Aap, involved in an online ponzi scam, officials said.
The accused identified as S Chitravel, was arrested from Aviyur near Madurai, Tamil Nadu.
He was brought to Odisha and produced before OPID Court Cuttack on August 16, and was sent to police remand for five days.
"The mastermind of this scam is one Guanhua Wang, (40), a resident of Hangzhou, China. He along with two other Chinese nationals (one male and one female) came to India in 2019 and stayed in Bengaluru for few months. They created at least 3 Shell companies based in Bengaluru to run different Cyber-financial scams," the EOW said in a statement.
"In one of such company, namely in “Bettec Technologies Private Limited” Chitravel was made director. During Covid, the trio went back to China but continued running the scam through Chitravel and some other such hired directors and facilitators. Chitravel used to get Rs 1 lakh per month to run the illegal scam in India,' the statement added.
Earlier, as per the EOW, these people were running illegal digital Loan Apps.
Law Enforcement Agencies started crackdown against Chinese Loan Apps after many people getting trapped and the government banned many such loan apps.
Chitravel used to supervise/manage the gang who used to threaten/ abuse and send the morphed porn pictures of loan victims and their family members/ friends/contacts, the statement added.
The statement added that after banning of loan apps they started running Earning Apps, online betting and other App based cyber-financial frauds
During the inquiry, EOW is said to have learned that money is being siphoned out of India in thousands of crores to China through these scams using multiple layers of mule bank accounts at lower level, followed by current bank accounts of shell companies/ hired firms, Crypto traders and some dubious export-import firms are used to siphon money out of India and In some cases, small amount have also been withdrawn in cash in Dubai, the EOW statement said.
The EOW said it has frozen more than Rs 2.6 crores in various bank accounts in this case.
