Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Cybercrime police apprehended a 21-year-old man from Mumbai, involved in cheating the people on the pretext of online trading and defrauded the victim to the tune of Rs 32 lakh. The accused has direct contact with the Chinese national in the fraud.

Police arrested Ansari Mohammed Umar Murad. Police earlier arrested Rishi Thushar Arothe Vikranth (30), a cricket coach, and Inamdar Vinayaka Rajendar Nikhil (25) both from Vadodara, Gujarat.

The accused were involved in a total of 12 cases across the country, each one case in Haryana, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, two cases in Karnataka and Telangana and three cases in Maharashtra. According to Cyber Crime police, Umar has good knowledge of cryptocurrency trading. He was in direct contact with a Chinese national and regularly communicated with him through Telegram. As per the instructions of the Chinese national, he, along with Rishi and Nikhil, used to convert the cheated amounts from Indian rupees into USDT and transfer the same to the wallet addresses provided by the Chinese national.

Accordingly, an amount of approximately Rs 50 lakh was converted into USDT through their wallet IDs and crypto dealers and subsequently transferred to the wallets provided by the Chinese national, said V Aravind Babu, DCP, Cyber Crimes.

The DCP said that in this case, the victim from Hyderabad was redirected to WhatsApp and was automatically added to a group titled ‘Aditya Birla Stock Elite Group 678’, where a woman introducing herself as Aiyana Joseph claimed to be a trade advisor. She persuaded him to invest and shared links to download a trading application.

“After installing the app, the victim was instructed to submit KYC details and bank information. He was later added to another WhatsApp group named ‘Aditya Birla High Net Worth IPO Exclusive Membership Group’, where members were advised to invest in specific stocks and IPOs, with a promise of high returns and a demand for 20% commission on profits.

The accused provided multiple bank accounts for depositing funds and the app falsely indicated that the victim had received IPO allotments and earned substantial profits. When the victim refused to deposit an additional Rs 1 crore, the application stopped functioning on January 23. Realizing he had been cheated, the victim reported the matter to the National Cyber Crime Helpline 1930 and filed a written complaint at the Cyber Crime Police Station,” said Aravind Babu.

In total, the victim transferred Rs 32 lakh to the bank accounts provided by the fraudsters. Following the complaint, a case was registered U sec 66(C), 66(D)of IT Act & Sec 318(4), 319(2), 336(3), 338, and 340(2) of the BNS. During the course investigation, accused persons were arrested.