E-Paper
Ludhiana: Woman among 3 held for running fake online trading app
The accused were running the racket from Feroze Gandhi Market for the past some years which is adjoining the office of commissioner of police
The city police have busted a gang of fraudsters with the arrest of three persons, including a woman, who were allegedly involved in duping people through a fake online trading app.
The accused used to lure people by asking them to invest their money through their app called V-Trade for huge and quick profits.
The accused had dupe investors of crores of rupees, but no one made a complaint as majorly people had invested unaccounted money through the app, police said.
The accused were running the racket from Feroze Gandhi Market for the past some years which is adjoining the office of commissioner of police.
According to the police, V-Trade is a training mobile application, which provides ideas to people about ways to invest their money online. The accused lied to their probable targets that the app is a portal for online trading.
The arrested accused have been identified as Anil Jain of Bawa Colony of Haibowal, who is the mastermind, Sunny Kumar of Lakshmi Nagar of Haibowal, who used to collect cash from their targets and do fraudulent entries on the app and Karamjit Kaur of Ahmedgarh, who used to make calls to their targets asking them to download the app and invest through it.
Anil’s brother Jatin Jain and a worker Gagandeep Singh of Daad village are yet to be arrested.
The police have recovered ₹40.62 lakh from their possession and seized their bank accounts with a deposit of ₹30.80 lakh, five laptops, 6 desktop computers, 7 mobile phones, 62 pieces of gold and diamond jewellery, 135 cheques worth ₹3.01 crore, one Mercedes, 1 Maruti Suzuki Ciaz car, 2 cash counting machines, registers with entries and documents of various properties from their possession.
Commissioner of police Mandeep Singh Sidhu said that the city police were investigating the matter for the past three months and found that Anil was running the racket with the help of his aides in which they lured people with huge and quick profits through online trading.
The accused would provide user ID and password to the users to operate the app and show fake growth of their investment. They also used to get blank cheques from the investors as security.
“When the investors wanted to withdraw money from their accounts, the accused used to make fake entries in their account on the app, claiming that they were in losses. They would threaten them to get their blank cheques dishonoured from the banks by writing a huge amount in it and would take legal action against them in the court,” Sidhu said.
“It is also found during the probe that most of the persons invested unaccounted money in the app following which they never lodged a complaint except one person, who had lost ₹15 lakh,” he added.
Sidhu said that the police obtained information of this app from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and found that the app is not registered with them. The Stock exchanges have also confirmed that the app and the people who had invested money through the app were not registered with them.
After a detailed homework, the police team on Monday conducted a raid at their office in Feroze Gandhi Market and arrested the accused, he said.
The police also found that Anil has used the money duped from people in buying luxury cars and invested in commercial as well as residential properties. The accused is already facing trial in two cases, including threatening a man over money and under Copyright Act.
According to the police, Anil had purchased a SCO near Orient cinema market worth ₹ 3.50 crore. He had also bought three properties on Dhandra road worth ₹90 lakh, One plot in Kohara worth ₹25 lakh and one residential house worth ₹50 lakh with the money he had earned by fraudulent means. He had bought six luxury cars from 2013 to 2020, including a Porsche car in 2018 and a Mercedes in 2020.
