Police busted an online gaming and betting racket that cheated thousands of nearly 200 crores. An online gaming and betting racket got busted and seven gang members got arrested by Ghaziabad Police on Thursday. Officers confirmed about the news that this gang was operating and managing three betting websites star345.com, wa.me.com, and bet33.com and they cheated almost Rs 200 crore in past four years.
According to the police, Bajinder Kumar was identified as the gang leader who was living in Dubai for the past six years and running the gang from there only. All the seven members who got arrested were identified by the Ghaziabad Police. One was Bajider’s brother Sumit Kumar others Hisar resident Nikhil, Panipat residents Subhash, Pradeep Maan, Sahil, and Gorinder Singh, and the last one Harvinder Singh was from Punjab. On Tuesday, all of them were sent to the Judiciary custody after being produced in the district court.
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Police busted an online gaming and betting racket that cheated thousands of nearly 200 crores
This gang was started by Bajinder when he went to Dubai in search of work in 2015. He started to cheat people in India by sending them malicious links to download online betting and gaming apps. Ghaziabad Police said that Bajinder had sent Harinder and Gorinder to India last year to manage his gang.
70 current bank accounts were founded by the Police in which a transaction of almost Rs. 150 crore was done by the gang. Some bank accounts of the gang members having money around Rs. 50 lakhs were seized. Circle Officer Abhay Misha and in-charge of the cyber cell stated that the gang members were cheating people by sending them links on Whatsapp and Telegram promising them to get cash money by playing games. After clicking on their link, it carries to the star345.com websites asking them to download a betting app called ‘Rising Star’ where people had to create an account on wa.me.com or Bet33.com.
To add money to the E-wallet of these websites, players had to add money from their bank accounts. Rs. 100 was the minimum amount to add to place bets on around 30 games like tennis, rugby, football, teen Patti and various other games. And as soon as the players add over Rs. 50,000 to their E-wallet, their account money gets automatically deleted and they were scammed.
Abhay Mishra also said “ The gang also used to coax people to open current bank accounts with the help of documents of fictitious online companies. They used to deposit Rs. 4 lakhs once the account was opened, paying the facilitator Rs. 5,000 per day. Transactions of around Rs. 20 to 40 lakhs – the money cheated from the players – took a play from each such amount.
This matter came into light after the resident of Kavi Nagar, Ritesh filed a complaint against the Rising Star app stating that he got scammed and cheated over Rs. 69,500. After this, Under sections 420(cheating), 406(criminal breach of trust), 467(forgery), 468(forgery for cheating), 471(using as genuine a forged document), and 120B(criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and relevant sections of the IT Act at Kavi Nagar police station an FIR was filed against the Rising Star app.
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