The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday nabbed three persons who were involved in running an international hawala racket. The links of the network have been traced to Pakistan.
Additional Director-General of Police (CID) Rajeev Tandon said that a CID team on Saturday detained Vishnu alias Dharmendra Prajapati from Vardhaman Plaza at Medicine market and Brajesh Patel alias Pankaj from Ayodhya Bypass and recovered around Rs 21,19,600, one laptop, six mobile phones, 37 ATM cards, 25 SIM cards, one currency counting machine, data cards and pen drive from their possession.
The third accused, Rajeev Patel, was detained from Ashoka Garden who was accused of delivering the money. Vishnu hails from Gujarat, while Rajeev and Brijesh are residents of Satna.
According to the police, in the month of April an internet lottery fraud was reported and investigated. It was found that for the past one year Brajesh Patel is an active and important member of international internet lottery nexus and was working with others. He was in contact with suspects Javed and Ishaq who are Pakistani nationals and used to provide bank account details of local banks and other information. These bank accounts were opened using fake documents.
The nexus used to inform the victims through e-mail and SMS and lured them by using scanned copies of cheque claiming to be won by the victims after which they would ask to deposit money for processing the lottery amount to be transferred in their bank account and as soon as the victim deposits the money it was withdrawn by the gang members and was transferred through hawala channel to Pakistan.