The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Thursday that it has attached movable assets worth Rs 2.77 crore, including crypto currency of Rs 18.05 lakh and shares worth Rs 4.17 lakh, in connection with the Power Bank app-related scam.
The ED said in a statement that it has attached assets worth Rs 2.77 crore under provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The ED case is based on an FIR registered by the Cyber Crime police station, CID, Bengaluru, in June 2021 against 13 accused entities under various sections of Information Technology Act, 2008 and the Indian Penal Code.
The financial probe agency said that its investigation revealed that the accused entities registered themselves with payment aggregators purporting that they are running business in the category of gaming, social networking and e-commerce whereas the public were induced to invest their money through investment schemes run in the name of Power Bank or Sunfactory app by assuring them huge rate of interest of up to 18 per cent to be paid on daily and weekly basis.
The ED said that as per the information received from the CID, 13 accused entities collected nearly Rs 342 crore from the public within a short span of three months during March to May, 2021.
“The accused entities neither paid interest nor returned the principal amount to the public and closed their purported business after collecting huge sums of money from the gullible public and went incommunicado,” the agency alleged.
Earlier, the ED had conducted searches and took custody of Anas Ahmed, the main accused in the case.
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