Chinese scammer ships Rs 2,300 crore abroad, police sit on bank accounts of innocent customers

Kozhikode: On June 4, 2022, DaniData -- a football betting app that promised to double money -- shut shop and vanished into thin air. There was mayhem, mostly in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

After eight months of investigation, the Cyber Crime Cell of Gujarat Police's CID submitted its charge sheet on March 16, 2023. It put the size of the scam at Rs 4,600 crore and said the app was developed by Chinese national Woo Uyanbe alias Chember, who is hiding in Shenzhen, China's Silicon Valley next to Hong Kong.

According to a report in Ahmedabad Mirror on March 19, Rs 2,300 crore was credited into 89 bank accounts and the money was sent offshore.

Ritvik Bhupat, his sister Payal and their four friends in Gujarat's Patan district lost Rs 3.24 lakh on the app. "It allowed us to bet on football matches and double our money. My sister got me in after she doubled her money to Rs 40,000," Ritvik, a BA English student, told Onmanorama.

The football matches could be in Europe or Mongolia and bringing in new bettors fetched the upline player a commission. But it was all a fairytale.

Ritvik said he had not heard from the police yet nor got his money back.

Bank freeze victim in the same boat
Ritvik does not know Riyas E Aboobacker (43), a cryptocurrency merchant from Kozhikode's Ramanattukara town. But Ritvik's complaint was one of the reasons for Federal Bank to freeze Riyas's account with the Ramanattukara branch on July 8, 2022. "Since then, I have been after the bank to know the reason," he said.

Federal Bank chose to reply to his email after two months on September 20, saying it was done at the request of Gujarat's State Cyber Crime Cell.

He approached the cyber cell but no information was forthcoming. But on November 4, Federal Bank froze three more accounts of Riyas Aboobacker because they had the same customer ID as his first account.

On November 18, he moved the chief judicial magistrate court at Gandhinagar to know the reasons for the "arbitrary" debit freeze on his accounts, and to remove them. "My lawyer in Kerala said it is better to approach the courts in Gujarat," he said.

After six hearings, he found that Rs 10 lakh he got after selling crypto coins was linked to the DaniData scam. The buyer bought the coins in two transactions worth Rs 5 lakh each.

The chief judicial magistrate of Gandhinagar is likely to hear his case for the seventh time on April 29 (Saturday).

What's worse, even after blocking his accounts, the Federal Bank chose to withhold Rs 40,000 in his sister's account because he transferred some money to her.

Aboobacker said he did not commit any crime. "As a crypto merchant, I put up digital coins for sale on Binance app. Any registered user can buy them. The buyer's identity and documents are available for the police to verify," he said.

Multiple calls made to the phone numbers of the Cyber Crime Cell of Gandhinagar CID went unanswered.

Police milking cyber crimes to the hilt
But Riyas Aboobacker's experience with Telangana police was different because he chose to bribe them.

South Indian Bank froze his account with Rs 6.3 lakh after a "disputed amount" of Rs 36,000 was transferred to him as part of a cryptocurrency deal.

The complaint was from the Cyber Crime Police of Rachakonda in Telangana's Ranga Reddy district.

Aboobacker, who is also a used car dealer, decided to go to Rachakonda because the police would have it no other way. "It took me one hour by bus to reach the police station from Secunderabad railway station," he said.

He reached the station by 11.30 am on March 31. By the time he left the station around 4.30 pm, he was poorer by Rs 70,000 but his account with South Indian Bank was reactivated.

"When I reached the police station, the officers called the complainant. Her name is Bandaru Geetha Sabari," Aboobacker said.

She reached the station within 10 minutes and her body language with the officers suggested that they were close, he said. "The officers abused me by calling me a thief multiple times. They were not ready to hear me out or allow the woman to explain how she lost her money," he said.

All she said was she could not remember anything from the day she lost money from her account. "From the police computer, I saw that the disputed amount against my account was Rs 33,000 though the transaction was for Rs 50,000," he said.

But the officers asked him to pay the woman Rs 50,000. "I protested but they verbally abused me more," he said.

Then Aboobacker called his business partner Thahir Ali in Malappuram's Tanalur town and asked him to send the money to Geetha Sabari.

The money was transferred to her account with Kotak Mahindra Bank at 12.44 pm. "When I showed the officers the screenshot of the transfer, they asked me to pay them Rs 20,000 to lift the freeze on my account. I objected. I told them that the money I got was not for free. I had sold crypto coins worth Rs 50,000. But they said that my account had Rs 6.3 lakh and I should not have a problem parting with another Rs 20,000," said Aboobacker.

Aboobacker said he had taken a small business loan of Rs 15 lakh and shared the details with the police. "But they insisted that they can unfreeze the account only if I give them Rs 20,000," he said.

He had to walk for around 10 minutes to find an ATM and withdrew the money in two transactions. "When I returned with the money, they handed me a copy of the email they sent to South Indian Bank to remove the debit freeze on my account," he said. The email was sent at 2.01 pm.

Aboobacker said that the police officers turned affable after they received the money. "I took the opportunity to tell everything I had to say about crypto selling and buying. I told them that the dealers were not criminals and that transactions were transparent and traceable. They knew everything but patiently heard me out," he said.

Federal Bank freezes account for Rs 1,000
The saga of the Federal Bank freezing huge amounts and accounts over paltry sums continues. On April 18, Federal Bank withheld Rs 88,600 in Betty Babu's account with the Chettikulangara branch in Alappuzha over a complaint registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.

Onmanorama.com looked up the complaint and followed the money trail. The original complaint was filed by Sneha Jaiswal of Varanasi. She lost Rs 88,600 in an online fraud on https://grouponcm.com. The shady website is still active.

On April 7, Abdulla Varikkodan (42), a manager with an American candy company in Dubai, received Rs 8,518 in his ICICI Bank account from Mujaheed Khan. The money was in exchange for the crypto coins he sold to Khan on the Binance crypto exchange. Khan is a verified merchant with over 10,000 crypto transactions on Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

However, ICICI Bank found that Rs 1,000 in the Rs 8,518 transferred to Varikkodan's account was linked to the fraud committed on Jaiswal, and withheld the disputed money.

Since his account was still active, Varikkodan transferred Rs 1 lakh to Betty Babu's account with Federal Bank on the same day.

Now, Federal Bank chose to freeze Rs 88,600 in Babu's account because there was a question mark over Rs 1,000 in Varikkodan's ICICI Bank account.

When contacted, a senior fed Bank official said the disputed amount (lien) of Rs 88,600 was withheld because there was no specific instruction from the police. "The fraudulent amount reported by the police is Rs 88,600. The transaction amount is Rs 1 Lakh. ICICI Bank marked Rs 1,000 as the disputed amount. In the absence of specific instruction from the police authorities, Federal Bank withholds either the fraudulent amount or the transaction amount, whichever is lesser," he said.

In this case, the fraudulent amount was less and so Rs 88,600 was marked as lien and withheld in Betty Babu's account.

Varikkodan said he had gotten only Rs 8,518 from Khan and ICICI Bank withheld Rs 1,000 as the disputed amount. "The rest of the money is clean. How can Federal Bank freeze Rs 88,600 in Betty's account when no disputed money reached her account from me? This is an abuse of access," he said.

Police should also go after the recipients of fraudulent money, not merchants, he said. "The fraudulent website through which Jaiswal lost her money is still active but our accounts and money are being frozen," he said.