Odisha EOW freezes Rs 1.22 Cr of trading App using morphed pics of Akshay Kumar, Manish Paul

Bhubaneswar: Odisha EOW froze a total amount of Rs 1.22 crore of an online trading App ‘Join Trade’ that was allegedly duping people using morphed photographs of Bollywood stars Akshay Kumar and Manish Paul.

During investigation of a case under sections 420/467/468/471/120 B IPC/ Sec 4,5 & 6 of PCMCS Banning Act, 6 OPID Act and 66C & 66D of IT Act, the EOW came through an advertisement on internet about an App namely ‘Join Trade – Financial Growth’ claiming to provide instant profit with minimal investment of money.

The advertisements morphed the photographs of leading Bollywood actors like Akshay Kumar and Manish Paul in order to mislead and instill trust in the public.

During the probe, it was found that the fraudulent app was downloadable from Google Play store and it had 1 lakh plus downloads. Powered and developed by Perfect Trade, the App claims to be a professional financial trading and wealth management platform with different investment schemes with minimal deposit of Rs 100 to Rs 20,000.

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 saving and current accounts maintained in the name of shell companies or firms and individuals. Layering was used for transaction of all ill-gotten money by transferring the bulk credit amount to further unknown accounts maintained in the name of firms/companies/persons. The EOW scrutinised five accounts that had a total transaction of Rs 18.67 crore, of which three accounts were maintained in name of big companies in Gujarat, Delhi and Rajasthan. All the accounts were maintained in banking majors including YES Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and IDFC First Bank.

The probe revealed that the accounts were operated by fraudsters mostly through internet banking. During the inquiry, a total amount of more than Rs 1.22 crore was frozen in the above cited bank accounts.

The EOW has also asked Gogle to remove the fraudulent app from its play store.

 

Also Read

Comments are closed.