Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar have busted an online betting racket which was operating from international locations with the arrest of Rustam Khan and Md Hakim, both directors of a Kolkata-based shell company – Hakim & Rustam Fabrics Private Limited, on Wednesday from the Shibpur area in Howrah district.
The duo has been booked under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471, and 120-B of the IPC and Sections 4, 5, and 6 of Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, Section 6 of Odisha Protection of Interest of Depositors Act and Section 66(D) of the IT Act, in a case by EOW, Bhubaneswar.
The duo was produced before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Howrah, on Wednesday and brought on a five-day transit remand for their production before the designated court under OPID, Berhampur in Odisha, the EOW stated.
An FIR was registered on the complaint of over 800 duped investors in the Ganjam district. These investors and lakhs of others across India had invested money in 18football.com with a motive to earn quick bucks.
According to reports, ’18football.com’, is a hybrid model of fraud where the Ponzi scheme (multilevel marketing) is run online giving the name of a football betting/ gaming App. The investors are promised of lucrative returns like a 3% compound return on investment daily, recharge bonus, referral bonus, extra bonus on the earning of the downline members, salary bonus, and daily withdrawal option among others.
The investors were required to create an account with “18football.com” either by application or through an offline referral link and were asked to bet money on some football matches as prescribed in the website/App. The investors were also provided with so-called foreign “mentors” to assist them in betting. These mentors used to communicate through telegram or apps only.
The investors were paid extra bonuses/commissions for introducing/ recruiting new members. In order to promote and to allure the innocent public, the fraudsters were also taking up promotional activities like some social works, charity etc in the rural areas and giving it huge publicity for people to consider their scheme as bonafide.
In the initial period, the fraudsters paid the promised return for some days to the investors but stopped making payments when the membership increased and closed the app “18football.com”.
The scammers used multiple shell companies/firms and their directors to route the ill-gotten money and also used mule accounts for multi-layering of money transactions to confuse law enforcement agencies.
The two arrested accused have confessed that they received a small amount of commission to run this shell company. However they used to get orders/directions from one Md Sheikh Saifi from Dubai, they said.
“Out of over 150 bank accounts involved in this racket, EOW has analysed 17 accounts to date, out of which transaction of Rs 108 crore has already been traced. It is suspected that money involved in this scam may go beyond Rs 1,000 crore,” DIG EOW, JN Pankaj said.
