Online Gaming Racket Busted: How Four Persons Including Chinese National Cheated Online Gamers

Online gaming seems to be gaining momentum in our country for quite sometime now and crimes related to it have started to come to the fore. Online gaming could be passion for some while it could turn out to be an addiction. There's s a thin line between passion and addiction and if that line is breached, one gets swayed into the path of crime. In one such incident, an online gaming racket was busted by Hyderabad police which was organised by 3 Indian nationals and a Chinese national.

Unsplash

The Hyderabad police, on 13 August, busted an online gaming and betting racket and apprehended four persons, including a Chinese national. The Chinese operated racket ran into hundreds of crore of rupees.

Acting on the duo's complaints that they were cheated and lost Rs 97,000 and Rs 1,64,000 respectively after placing bets in the online gaming websites, the Cyber Crimes Wing of Hyderabad police registered cases under relevant sections of Telangana Gaming Act and Indian Penal Code.

Chinese national arrested

Police arrested Yah Hao, a Chinese national (Head of Operations for South East Asia) and three Directors Dheeraj Sarkar, Ankit Kapoor and Neeraj Tuli, Hyderabad Commissioner of Police Anjani Kumar told reporters.

The amount frozen by investigators in bank accounts (Gurugram) during investigation so far is nearly Rs 30 crore, Kumar said.

The total value of inward transactions on the two accounts traced so far is nearly Rs 1,100 crore, majority of which is in 2020, he said.

Modus operandi

According to the police officials, the racket holders were luring passionate gamers through Telegram groups. Entry was done by reference only and the members who introduce more players gets a certain commission. The admins of these groups would tell players about the websites where the registered members could only play games and place bets over the game. These websites changed each day. One of the game was called colour prediction where the players placed their bets on the colour, police said. Whereas, the bank accounts linked with the payments were linked to the companies like Linkyun, Dokypan, Spotpay and other, according to the police.

"Most of the remittances have been transferred to different other accounts which are being traced and some of the accounts are overseas. Total overseas remittances known as of now is nearly Rs 110 crore," Kumar said.

During the probe it came to light that the domain name servers of the gaming websites are based out of China and the data hosting services are cloud-based in the US and operated from China.

The entire technical operation is run by the China based directors/partners of these companies and the payments were being routed through India based payment service providers/gateways, he said.

"It is understood from the investigation so far that the companies are controlled through a firm called Beijing T Power Company based out of China," Kumar said.

Shocking revelations

During investigation, it was found that online gaming was being organised by initiating prospective gamers through social media platform--Telegram groups, wherein entry was limited by reference and each member who introduces a certain number of new members were paid commission, he said.

"On these groups the admins will usually indicate the websites on which the registered members can play games and place bets.

These websites would be changed on a daily basis," he explained, pointing out that Telangana had passed a legislation banning online gaming in the state.

"The effort of the group is to constantly establish new companies and more operations from one company to other," Kumar said, adding the promoters and shareholders of these companies are Indians and Chinese.

Kumar further said they will be seeking support from other agencies like Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax Department and Registrar of Companies (RoC) as part of further investigations into the cases.