4 persons, including Chinese national, arrested by Hyderabad Police for online gaming racket

Four persons, including a Chinese national, were arrested on Thursday after two people made a complaint to the Hyderabad Police claiming that they had been cheated on an online gaming website and lost Rs. 97,000 and Rs 1,64,000 respectively, Anjani Kumar, IPS Commissioner of Police Hyderabad City said on Thursday.

Four persons, including a Chinese national, were arrested on Thursday after two people made a complaint to the Hyderabad Police claiming that they had been cheated on an online gaming website and lost Rs. 97,000 and Rs 1,64,000 respectively, Anj Kumar, IPS Commissioner of Police Hyderabad City said on Thursday.

"An investigation was carried out and it was found that the online game was being orgsed through the initiation of prospective gamers through Telegram groups. Entry was by reference only and members who introduced a new person would receive a commission.

"The admins of the group would inform the participants about the gaming website on which the registered members could place wagers or bets. These websites changed on a daily basis. In this particular format, placed bets on colours in a game called Colour Prediction. It was revealed that the bank accounts and payment gateways were linked to several compes. The effort of the group is to constantly establish new compes and more operations from one company to other," the statement said.

The Investigation led to the arrest of a Chinese national namely, Yah Hao, (Head of Operations for South East Asia Authorized Signatory), and other associated persons, namely Dheeraj Sarkar resident of Gurugram (Director), Ankit Kapoor (Director) and Neeraj Tuli resident of Delhi.

"In recent times, cases of suicide due to online betting have been reported from Telangana and other parts of the country which will be investigated from this angle. It is also possible that these groups are involved in other Cyber Crime activities like Phishing, running banned apps and dating apps etc.

The statement further said that the Domain Name Servers were based out of China and the Data hosting services was Cloudbased in the US and operated from China.

"The entire technical operation is run by the China-based directors/partners of these compes. The payments were being routed through India based payment service providers/gateways. It is understood from the investigation so far that the compes are controlled through a firm called Beijing T Power Company based out of China. The total value of the inward transaction on the two accounts traced so far is nearly Rs. 1100 Crores, a majority of which is in the year 2020. Most of the remittances have been transferred to different other accounts which are being traced and some of the accounts are overseas. As of now, the total known overseas remittances is nearly Rs. 110 crore. The group was planning to register a company in the Cayman Islands," it said.

The statement further said that nearly 30 crores have been frozen so far in the investigation.

"Co-operation will be sought from other agencies for evaluating financial transaction and compliance with other laws," it added.

( With inputs from ANI )