BackOnline trading fraud dupes 7 lakh people of Rs3,700 crore in Uttar Pradesh, 3 arrested
UP police busts an alleged online trading scam worth over Rs3,700 crore in which nearly 7 lakh people were duped on the pretext of getting money in lieu of clicking on specific links
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Lucknow/Noida: Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) on Thursday busted an alleged online trading scam worth over Rs3,700 crore in which nearly seven lakh people were duped on the pretext of getting money in lieu of clicking on specific links.
The STF detected the fraud by Noida-based Ablaze info solutions Private Limited which was operating through online portal https://Socialtrade.biz and later changed to https://Frenzzup.com, a senior police official said in Lucknow.
The Noida-based company’s director Anubhav Mittal, chief executive officer Sridhar and technical head Mahesh Dayal were arrested and an first information report (FIR) was lodged at Soorajpur police station in Noida, he said.
The task force has also sealed the bank accounts of the company, based in Sector 63 in Noida, which had a total balance of Rs500 crore, the special task force’s ASP Amit Pathak said.
The company used to lure gullible people by asking them to take their package from Rs5,750 to Rs57,500 and earn money by liking pages and clicking on the links they send.
“The company offers Rs5 per like to investors and claim they used to get Rs6 from the concerned companies for every like. However, the links sent to them were fake", he said.
During the probe, it was found that over 6.5 lakh people had deposited over Rs3,726 crore in the company’s accounts using over nine lakh ids. The STF got a clue after investors started alleging that they were not getting the money after which detailed probe was initiated.
The STF said the company’s director passed out B.tech in computer science in 2010 and set up a company which earned Rs3-4 lakh per annum till 2015 after which he floated socialtrade.biz online portal for the fraud.
The STF has also informed RBI, income tax department and Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, for further action in this regard.
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