New Delhi | The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday said it has made two fresh arrests from Kerala in a Chinese app "fraud" loan-linked money-laundering case.
Sayid Muhammad and Varghese T G were taken into custody on Thursday by the ED's Kochi office, the federal agency said in a statement.
In January, the ED arrested four persons from Tamil Nadu on charges of sending money illegally to Singapore as part of this case investigation.
The money-laundering case stems from multiple FIRs filed by the Kerala and Haryana police departments on the complaints of certain victims, who said money was "extorted" from them in the name of loan facilitation or through blackmailing.
The loan-app operators used to extort money from victims adopting various methods, such as seeking advance monthly instalments and blackmailing, using private data hacked from mobile phones while installing the loan apps, and also by threatening to share the victims' morphed obscene pictures with their contacts, according to the ED.
The agency claimed that on the instructions of loan-app fraudsters, these two suspects arranged about 500 "mule" bank accounts, which got a credit of Rs 719 crore. This amount was generated from victims of the "loan-app scam" and they also arranged 26 crypto currency accounts on WazirX, a crypto currency-trading platform.
The two are also accused of "facilitating" cross-border remittances in the form of crypto currencies to the tune of Rs 115.67 crore to wallets based in foreign countries.
Sayid Muhammad and Varghese T G are part of a "larger" international network that generated proceeds of crime from victims and remitted money outside India. They received a remuneration of Rs 2 crore and Rs 70 lakh respectively for "arranging" mule (accounts used for money laundering) for bank accounts and WazirX crypto accounts, the ED claimed.
Money has also been remitted to Singapore through normal banking channels as well as through Nium India Private Limited, a cross-border remittance platform and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nium Private Limited, Singapore, against the "fake" import of software or digital goods and services, it said.
These loan apps are "controlled" by some Chinese persons, officials said.