2 Arrested From Bengal For Duping Investors In Odisha By Running Ponzi Scheme Through Gaming App

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar, arrested directors of a Kolkata-based shell company Hakim & Rustam Fabrics Private Limited from Shibpur area in Howrah district of West Bengal on charges of duping over 800 investors in the Odisha’s Ganjam district.

The arrested have been identified as Rustam Khan and Md. Hakim. The investors and lakhs of others across India had invested money in 18football.com to earn quick bucks.

According to an EoW release, 18football.com is a hybrid model of fraud used for running Ponzi scheme online by giving the name of a football betting/gaming app.

The investors were required to create an account with “18football.com” either by application or through an offline referral link and were asked to bet money on some football matches as prescribed in the website/app. The investors were also provided with so-called foreign “mentors” to assist them in betting. These mentors used to communicate through telegram or apps only.

The investors are promised lucrative returns like a 3% compound return on investment daily, recharge bonus, referral bonus, extra bonus on the earning of the downline members, salary bonus, and daily withdrawal option among others. They were paid extra bonuses/commissions for introducing/ recruiting new members. To promote and to allure the innocent public, the fraudsters were also taking up promotional activities like some social works and charity in the rural areas and giving it huge publicity for people to consider their scheme as bonafide.

In the initial period, the fraudsters paid the promised return for some days to the investors but stopped making payments when the membership increased and closed the app “18football.com”.

“The scammers used multiple shell companies/firms and their directors to route the ill-gotten money and also used mule accounts for multi-layering of money transactions to confuse law enforcement agencies. The two arrested have confessed that they received a small amount of commission to run this shell company. However they used to get orders/directions from one Md Sheikh Saifi from Dubai,” the release further said.

Of over 150 bank accounts involved in this racket, the EOW has analysed 17  and transaction of Rs 108 crore has already been traced. It is suspected that money involved in this scam may go beyond Rs 1,000 crore, it added.