LUCKNOW -- Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) on Thursday busted an alleged online trading scam worth over ₹3,700 crore in which nearly seven lakh people were duped on the pretext of getting money in lieu of clicking on specific links.
STF detected the fraud by Noida-based Ablaze info solutions Private Limited, which was operating through online portal http://Socialtrade.biz and later changed to http://Frenzzup.com, a senior police official said.
The Noida-based company's Director Anubhav Mittal, CEO Sridhar and technical head Mahesh Dayal were arrested and an FIR was lodged at Soorajpur police station in Noida, he said.
The task force has also sealed the bank accounts of the company, based in Sector 63, which had a total balance of ₹500 crore, the Special Task Force's ASP Amit Pathak said.
The company used to lure gullible people by asking them to take their package from ₹5,750 to ₹57,500 and earn money by liking pages and clicking on the links they send.
"The company offers ₹5 per like to investors and claim they used to get ₹6 from the concerned companies for every like. However, the links sent to them were fake", he said.
During the probe, it was found that over 6.5 lakh people had deposited over ₹3,726 crore in the company's accounts using over nine lakh ids.
The STF got a clue after investors started alleging that they were not getting the money after which detailed probe was initiated.
STF said the company's director, who did B.tech in computer science in 2010 and set up a company which earned ₹3-4 lakh per annum till 2015 after which he floated socialtrade.biz online portal for the fraud.
STF has also informed RBI, Income Tax department and SEBI for further action in this regard.
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