Noida: Five people, including a Chinese national, were arrested for allegedly duping people on the pretext of better investment opportunities, police said on Wednesday.
The police received information regarding the bulk purchase of SIM cards, some of which were active in foreign countries and were being used to run social media accounts on different platforms, they said.
"Five people, including a Chinese national, who were part of a group duping common people through social media platforms have been arrested," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Noida) Vidya Sagar Mishra said.
"A total of 21 mobile phones, 223 SIMs including 94 new SIM cards, two laptops, seven Aadhaar cards, etc have been seized from their possession," Mishra said.
The accused were identified as Tenzin Kalsang, Krishna Murari, Tsering Dhondup, Shobhit Tiwari and Chinese national Zhu Junkai, police said.
Junkai has a visa that is valid till August this year, Additional DCP Manish Mishra said.
"The Chinese man worked as a facilitator for the fraud and was a link between other accused involved in the case," Additional DCP Mishra said.
"He had been frequently travelling to Dubai, India and China, where he is a permanent resident," he said.
ACP (Noida 3) Shavya Goyal, who led the investigation in the case, said the accused used 'mule accounts' for the transaction of the funds.
"It's a recent modus operandi wherein thugs take bank accounts of some gullible people in exchange for some money for every transaction. These accounts are known as mule accounts," Goyal added.
She said a single transaction of Rs 51 lakh from one such mule account recently brought the group's activities under police radar, leading to their arrest.
According to police, for every transaction done through mule accounts, the accused paid Rs 3,000 for a savings account and Rs 20,000 for a corporate account.
The police said they are investigating the case further and checking the entire money trail in the case.
An FIR has been lodged at the Expressway Police Station under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will) and 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), the police added.