Bhubaneswar, Feb 24: In a major breakthrough the Economic Offences Wing, Bhubaneswar has arrested two accused from Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal for duping lakhs of investors through 18 football.com.
Out of 150 plus bank accounts involved in the racket, EOW have analysed 17 accounts till date, out of which transactions of Rs.108 Crores have already been traced.
It is suspected that money involved in this scam may go beyond Rs.1000 crores.
It is a huge international scam running online from a website which has been registered in HONGKONG (China) and also operated from Dubai.
EOW will involve other law enforcement agencies of central and other state governments and also Interpol to unearth the Scam.
The EOW has advised people not to download such Apps/ Websites and indulge in such online Betting Cum Ponzi activities.
EOW sources here on Friday said the two were arrested and produced before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Howrah, on February 22 and were brought on the strength of five days transit remand for their production before the Designated Court under OPID, Berhampur.
18football.com is a hybrid model of fraud where Ponzi scheme (Multi- level Marketing) is run online giving a name of football betting/ gaming APP.
EOW sources said FIR was registered on the complaint of over 800 duped investors of Ganjam district. They and Lakhs others (Pan India, across the states) had invested money in 18football.com with a motive to earn quick money.
The investors are promised lucrative benefits like 3 percent daily compound return on investment, recharge bonus, referral bonus, extra bonus on the earning of the downline members, salary bonus, daily withdrawal option
The investors need to create an account with “18football.com” either by application or through offline referral link, and were being asked to bet money in some football matches as prescribed in website/ APP.
Investors were also provided with the so called foreigner “mentor” to assist them in betting. These mentors used to communicate through telegram or Apps only.
There was an extra bonus/ commission 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 in the rural areas and giving it huge publicity so that people will consider this scheme as a bonafide organization.
The fraudsters although initially paid the promised return for some few days to the investors, yet in the latter stage when the membership increased, stopped making any payment and closed the app “18football.com”.
The Scammers used multiple shell companies/ firms and their directors to route the ill-gotten money. They also used mule accounts for multi- layering of money transactions to confuse the law enforcement agencies.
EOW sources said one of the companies was Kolkata based M/s Hakim & Rustam Fabrics Pvt. Ltd. of which the two arrested fraudsters are the directors.
They have confessed to getting a small amount of commission to run this shell company.However they used to get the order/ direction from one Md Sheikh Saifi from Dubai.
