Online Racket: ₹5 Crore Forex Trade, 4 Arrested

On Thursday, 21st June 2018, the Cyberabad police arrested four men from Mumbai for supposably cheating unwary persons across the country of a total Rs 5 crore on the pretext of Forex Trade.

Police said they arrested Shahnawaz Abdul Rehman Lakhani, Alok Pawar, Niket Shetty and Nawaz Ansari from their call centre in Mumbai, based on mobile tower location and other scientific evidence.

On May 8, the cyber crime wing of the Cyberabad police received a complaint from one Swetha, a resident of Rajendranagar, who claimed she had invested over Rs 1.9 lakh after contacting the four men over phone. She was given a user ID, a login password and IP number for viewing trade, reportedly carried out using MetaTrader4, a software application for online trading analysis.

Cyberabad police commissioner V C Sajjanar said to TOI, “After some time, she found that she had earned profits on her investment. Invigorated by her earnings, she invested an additional Rs 7.26 lakh. After a month, the victim, on verification of the trading status, found she had earned Rs 1.18 lakh profit in her account. She decided to withdraw her investment along with the profit, but found the accused had kept their phones switched off”.

Shanawaz is a commerce graduate from Palghar, had earlier worked as a telecaller with an online forex trading firm. In July 2017, he started his own company and started to employee telecallers to earn easy money. Pawar and Shetty were team leaders, while Ansari was a telecaller.

A police officer revealed, “Shanawaz used to collect information of people interested in share marketing from various data providers and send bulk messages to them by assuring huge profits in online forex trading in a short time,” Sajjanar said. Shanawaz would explain to prospective investors about the online forex trading and trading packages, besides the sale of MetaTrader4 app. “If the client agreed to do online forex trade with them, they collected copies of their PAN and Aadhaar cards and a fee and created an account in the name of the investor before duping them”.

Also read: Bank Of Maharashtra Chairman Arrested in Rs. 3,000 Crore Fake Loans Case