Odisha EOW freezes Rs 1.22 cr of fake investment app using morphed pictures Bollywood stars

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch has frozen Rs 1.22 core of a fake investment app which has been duping gullible investors on pretext of higher returns.

According to the EOW, the application named Join trade- Financial Growth claims to be a professional financial trading and wealth management platform with different investment schemes with minimal deposit of Rs 100-20,000.

Developed by Perfect Trade, the app morphed the pictures of leading Bollywood actors like Akshay Kumar and Manish Paul, in order to mislead and instil trust in the public. 

The fraudulent app by the name Join trade is downloadable in Google Play store and has 1 Lakh Plus downloads, the EOW informed.

“During further enquiry, it came to surface that the amount can only be deposited through UPI’ID’s reflected in the APP which keeps changing constantly each minute and such ID’s were linked to savings Bank and current accounts maintained in the name of many shell companies / firms and individual persons,” the EOW said in a statement.

“During enquiry, five accounts were scrutinized having total transactions of Rs 18.67 crore. Out of these, three accounts were maintained in the name of big firms/ companies based in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Delhi. It was further observed that all the above noted mule accounts which were opened in the name of individuals and companies were maintained mainly in YES Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and IDFC First Bank. Enquiry revealed that the accounts were operated by the fraudsters mostly through internet banking,” the probing agency said.