Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Crime Branch has unearthed a ponzi application ‘Join Trade’ for cheating people through advertisements with morphed pictures of leading Hindi film actors such as Akshay Kumar and Manish Paul.
During a probe launched by EOW, a total amount of more than Rs 1.22 crore was frozen by EOW. The agency has also written to Google to remove the app from Google Play Store.
EOW sources said during the Investigation of a case Thursday, the investigating officer came across an advertisement on the internet about an app by the name ‘Join Trade’ claiming to provide instant profit with minimal investment of money.
Their advertisements morphed the pictures of renowned actors like Akshay Kumar and Manish Paul, in order to mislead the public.
On further investigation, it came to the surface that the fraudulent app by the name ‘Join Trade’ is downloadable in Google Play store and has more than one lakh downloads.
The app is powered or developed by ‘Perfect Trade’. The app claims to be a professional financial trading and wealth management platform with different investment schemes with minimal deposits of Rs 100 to Rs 20,000.
During further inquiry, it came to the fore that the amount can only be deposited through UPI IDs reflected in the app which keeps changing constantly each minute and such IDs were linked to savings and current bank accounts maintained in the name of many shell companies and individual persons.
The EOW said layering was used for transacting the ill-gotten money by transferring the bulk credit amount to further unknown accounts maintained in the name of firms or companies and individuals.
It said during the investigation, five accounts were scrutinised having a total transaction of Rs 18.67 crores, out of which three accounts were maintained in the name of big firms based in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Delhi.
It was further observed that all the noted mule accounts which were opened in the name of individuals and companies were maintained mainly in YES Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and IDFC First Bank.
The inquiry revealed that the accounts were operated by fraudsters mostly through internet banking.
UNI
