The Hyderabad Police have busted an international gang involved in multi-level marketing scam across the country. According to police, a few old scammers, who were committing fraud in the name of QNET, have launched another racket in the name of IGNITE.
The gang was busted within 18 days of the company’s launch, thereby preventing a scam which would have been worth Rs 5,000 crore.
Six persons were arrested in this connection. They were remanded to judicial custody, the police said. According to sources, the fraudsters have been trying relaunch QNET under different other names for the past few years.
On May 18, a dummy company called IndiConnect Ventures was registered in Chandigarh. In the name of that company, a strategy was formulated to expand a chain link racket called IGNITE across the country. The police found that the gang was using innovative methods to attract people.
They targeted the families of middle-class and government employees through WhatsApp groups, Zoom call meetings, and popular shopping malls. The police found that the QNET gang collected Rs 60,000 in the name of membership fee by handing over a simple electric toothbrush worth only Rs 600 in the market.
Investigations revealed that those who joined initially hoped that they would get huge commissions if they recruited a few more people. Some victims filed complaints at SR Nagar, Kacheguda, and Panjagutta police stations the same time that the racket was gaining ground in Hyderabad.
The Central Crime Station, collected details with technical evidence and found that it was a huge international conspiracy. The police conducted simultaneous raids in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi and six key accused running the network have been arrested, Hyderabad Commissioner of Poice V C Sajjanar said.
“In the past, they had started this racket based in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Now they have changed their name and were in the process to launch a company from Chandigarh under a new name. As soon as the cases were registered in Hyderabad, we conducted an investigation and were able to stop this scam,” said Sajjanar.
The investigation found that crores of rupees collected from the victims were being transferred abroad. They were converted into crypto currency through shell companies in seven stages and then directly to Hong Kong through hawala. Sajjanar said the police were coordinating with the central investigation agencies to fully uncover this international racket.
