12 Kolkata: The police busted a gang operated by two cousins who asked acquaintances to invest in a gaming app they had developed and play online games to make quick gains. Once they got the victims addicted to the games, they usurped the entire invested money for which they even hired mule accounts, said cops.
Police said it started as a simple case of fraud at the Park Street police station after a showroom selling dresses lodged a complaint saying payments worth lakhs were being siphoned off to other accounts instead of their own account.
A police probe was launched at the beginning of this year, and cops soon realised that it was an insider's job. A manager at the showroom was found to have transferred payments worth lakhs from customers to her boyfriend's account. Her boyfriend, it was found, invested this money in online games. In fact, he was putting pressure on her to constantly transfer money to him.
The man was detained and repeatedly questioned even as multiple suspect bank transactions were studied in detail. "When we finally broke the entire trail chain, it was revealed that the person winning the game was the boyfriend's cousin. The boyfriend deliberately invested in the game and lost. The winner was a mule account that was operated under his cousin's name," said an investigating officer.
"This was initially a physical fraud, but we took a lot of technical support from the Lalbazar cyber cell and the division," said another divisional officer.
Cops said they are investigating all angles, including if others are involved. "We believe that while a few basic games were developed by the two men themselves, they were also using some Chinese gaming apps to target younger people. We have now a list of suspects whom we wish to investigate beyond the three arrests so far," said an investigating officer. The cyber cell of the south division has been tasked to prepare a list of possible other victims who lost their money after investing in this gaming app, said Lalbazar sources.