Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha police has arrested accused Krishnananda N from his native state Karnataka in connection to an online Ponzi app scam.
Krishnananda has cheated people through GETSO Earning App. The EOW was able to crack down on the mobile App after a person namely Dibyajyoti Kar of Nayapalli, Bhubaneswar, lodged a complaint against the App, an EOW official said.
Dibyajyoti joined a WhatsApp group through a person identifying as manager of a company namely GETSO doing the business of crypto mining. He was induced to invest with the company for getting high returns like 6 percent daily on the invested amount apart from daily withdrawal facility.
Accordingly, the complaint created an account on the website of GETSO company through an upline referral link and deposited an amount of Rs1.27 lakh with the company during the period from October 2022 to December 2022.
Subsequently, the GETSO WhatsApp group was closed and withdrawal requests were ignored by GETSO. The company cheated Dibyajyoti and thousands of other investors across India. There would be more than hundred investors from Odisha alone, the official said.
During the investigation, so far, the EOW traced a scam involving more than Rs144 crore. The fraud company was running online money circulation by running Ponzi schemes in the name of crypto mining and operating throughout India.
The amount of invested money and the number of investors will go up with the progress of investigation. Out of the invested amount, Rs.26 crores was found to have been transacted through the account of the arrested accused Krishnananda N, he said.
The officials informed that GETSO fraudulently claimed to be a Washington, USA-based company on its website/App. The mobile App is available in Google Play Store with more than 10,000 downloads. It used some YouTubers to promote the scheme-like Earning Guru Mj.
It claimed to be doing the crypto mining but actually was running a ponzi/ multi-level marketing online scam. On October 25, 2022, the company announced that it is withdrawing from the Indian market claiming high taxation from the Indian Government on cryptocurrency.
IANS