Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch busted various illegal earning apps that use photos of celebrities for promotion and froze Rs 75 lakh of 14 different bank accounts, official sources said today.

These bank accounts were linked to apps like Dice, Quickwrummy, Fly Aviator, Weonlinepro Three, MVP trader, Ft11, UNO, ForexDana, Live 22 cash, Aviator X, City5, Homer Alexander etc. Together, these apps had over 1.56 crore downloads.

It was found that these scamsters were using the morphed photographs of celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Sachin Tendulkar, Technical Guruji etc. They also used the logo of popular companies like Tata to mislead/ impress people on various social media platforms.

It was also found that some 'social media influencers', and TV stars/ celebrities were promoting/ endorsing these online ponzi apps.

Investigation revealed that the amount can only be deposited through UPI IDs reflected in the apps, which keep changing constantly and were linked to bank accounts maintained in the name of many shell companies and individuals.

The total transactions in the bank accounts are of over Rs 1000 crores. It is suspected that these accounts are also used in other cyber/ financial crimes related to online ponzi schemes, illegal digital loan apps, courier scam, sextortion, work from home scam, YouTube liking scam, rating scam etc., the EOW said.

It has been noticed that the money was routed through very complex multi layering of various mule accounts and finally transferred out of India using crypto trade. Most of these scams are operated from or have links in Dubai, UAE, the EOW added.