The Odisha Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has arrested one S Chitravel (31) from Tamil Nadu for his alleged involvement in online Chinese earning app scams.

Chitravel was produced before a local court in Tamil Nadu and was brought to Odisha and produced before the OPID Court in Cuttack on Wednesday. The court granted EOW a five-day remand of the accused.

The mastermind of the scam is one Guanhua Wang, (40) of Hangzhou in China. He along with two other Chinese nationals, including a woman, came to India in 2019 and stayed in Bengaluru for a few months. They created at least three Shell companies based in Bengaluru to run different cyber financial scams.

In one such company Bettec Technologies Private Limited. Chitravel was appointed as director. During Covid time, the three Chinese nationals went back to China but continued running the scam through Chitravel and some hired directors and facilitators.

Chitravel used to get Rs 1 lakh per month to run the illegal racket in India. Earlier, these Chinese nationals were running illegal digital loan apps. However after many people committed suicide being trapped in loan apps, law enforcement agencies started crackdown against Chinese loan apps and the government banned many such loan apps.

Chitravel used to supervise the gang who used to threaten and send the morphed porn pictures of loan victims and their family members to friends and contacts.

After banning of loan apps, they started running earning apps (kind of online ponzi scheme with a promise of doubling or tripling the money) in a very short time but ultimately duping huge amounts from poor investors through online betting and other app-based cyber financial frauds.

The fraudsters were using the morphed photos of celebrities in their online advertisements to lure the new investors or victims. However this time, they were more careful. They developed their software or apps in China but got it registered or uploaded from India so that it can be masked as an Indian product or app. Money was being siphoned out of India in thousands of crores to China through these scams.