A cheating complaint in Hyderabad unearths Chinese online gambling scam worth crores
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Two people complained of losing money to an online gambling website in Hyderabad. Cybercrime officials froze two HSBC bank accounts in Gurugram. Investigation revealed a larger conspiracy involving Chinese nationals. The total value of the inward transaction on the two accounts traced so far was nearly Rs 1100 crore. Four people have been arrested in the case. Yah Hao, a Chinese national, was apprehended from IGI Airport in Delhi. Three others were arrested from Gurugalugrams. Enforcement Directorate has stepped in.
The people are lured into online gaming via Telegram. Most of the websites have domain names registered in China. The money generated from the betting operations via these websites are transferred to the bank accounts. The bank account details were found linked to companies named Linkyun Technology Pvt Ltd, Dokypay Technology Ltd and SpotPay Technology India PvT Ltd. Police suspect a pool of dummy companies helped them move operations around to evade the attention of law enforcement agencies. They are all registered with the Registrar of Companies since 2019. Payments were routed through India-based payment service providers and gateways.
Yah Hao, in his late-20s, has traveled to India two to three times in the last two years. Since January 2020, he has been stationed in Delhi and was overseeing the online gambling activities. He speaks fluent English and graduated college in 2017-18. Haos claims he was sent to Delhi in January as a substitute to the then head of India operations of the company. The company has operations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and south-east Asian countries. One of them is a grocery store owner who claims to have no knowledge of his company's activities and claims his neighbour asked him to.
