Bhubaneswar: Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha Crime Branch has unearthed a fake website -‘http://www.smsmvip.com’ defrauding thousands of investors across the country.
It is suspected that at least 3,700 investors across India have already been duped by this website/scheme, the EOW said Tuesday and advised people not to respond to unknown WhatsApp messages alluring to earn additional income.
The website claims to be an investment site in which investors could earn additional income on a daily basis by investing a minimum amount of Rs 1,000 and a maximum of up to Rs 2 Lakhs.
On opening the website it shows the name “Marathon Digital Holdings”. To lure the investors they used to give some instant amount without doing anything. The website was created in the USA and is being operated from Hong Kong (China), EOW sources said.
This fake website has a unique modus operandi in which an investor would be given a set of tasks i.e. liking some videos on YouTube.
The investor is required to send screenshots relating to the completion of the task as proof for the conclusion of the task to the tutor on Telegram Chat.
Thereupon, the investor is given the next set of tasks. For each task, the investor has to deposit a minimal amount of Rs 1,000, which needs to be paid through a UPI ID reflected on the website.
The UPI ID reflected on the website gets changed at intervals of a few minutes.
During the inquiry, it came to light that the UPI IDs reflected on the website for payment towards investment were linked to bank accounts maintained in the name of many shell companies, firms and mule accounts operated in the name of individual persons.
The statement of as many as 11 accounts linked to this fraud website was analyzed and it came to light that within a period of 3-4 months, the accounts had total transactions of Rs 39.11 crore with a leftover Balance of 11.91 lakhs only, which was frozen by the EOW.
The bulk amount from most of these accounts was transferred to three accounts maintained with HDFC Bank, in which the total transactions were more than 85 lakh out of which an amount of Rs.41.26 lakhs were subsequently withdrawn in Dubai.
UNI