The Bureau of Immigration of the Ministry of Home affairs on Monday issued a look out circular against a Chinese citizen who operated the multi-level marketing firms and online Ponzi schemes using the morphed photographs of celebrities to dupe unsuspecting investors across the country to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore.

The Bureau of Immigration issued the lookout circular after the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha Police had requested the union home ministry in this regard.

The EOW had earlier frozen by Rs 75 lakh in 14 bank accounts operated by the fraudsters across India. The scammers had adopted deceptive ploy by using the morphed photographs of celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Sachin Tendulkar and Technical Guruji, famous YouTuber, to deceive people.

Look out circular is generally issued to alert immigration check posts at airports/seaports to alert law enforcement agencies, if a wanted person tries to leave the country or arrives inside the country from abroad.

The mastermind of the racket, Guanhua Wang (40), is a resident of Flat No.202, Number-199, Wensen Road, City- Hangzhou, District- Xihu, State- Zhenjiang of China. He had used a complex network of mule bank accounts, shell companies and Crypto-traders to deceived the hard-earned money of the investors, EOW said in a statement.

The Chinese national Wang had formed “Bettec Technologies Private Limited” in 2019 based in Dickenson road, Bengaluru, India. He also controlled at least two other Bangalore based companies through his mule directors.

Wang had visited India at least on six occasions in 2019 and 2020 mainly to Bengaluru. The well-orchestrated scam was operated by him from China with the help of many India based associates who looked after the mule bank accounts, shell companies and Crypto-traders, whatsapp/telegram groups, administrators.

They circulated advertisements using the morphed photos of celebrities.

Initial investigations suggest siphoning of more than 100 crores by his company using above methods. EOW has frozen around 75 lakh from his company’s account.

The Financial Intelligence Unit has been requested to provide details of its other accounts.

In the last one year, EOW Odisha has found that at least in 3 cases (including current case) of Cyber-financial cases involving frauds of hundreds of crore rupees being run by Chinese nationals.

Apart from this, in the recent case of siphoning of Rs.14 crore by QR code manipulation, initial probe suggests that the entire conspiracy was being run from China, EOW concluded in a statement.