Eighty bank accounts having a balance of Rs. 1 crore have been frozen by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) as part of its ongoing investigation in a case related to ‘Super Like Earning Application’, a scam promising part-time online jobs, an official said on Thursday.
The bank accounts of the accused people were frozen during the two-day-long search proceedings on Monday and Tuesday at 16 locations in Bengaluru, an ED spokesperson said.
The official said the searches were conducted under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at the residential premises of the accused and also on the offices of payment gateways, including PhonePe, Paytm, Google Pay and Amazon Pay, and banks like HDFC, ICICI and Dhanalakshmi.
The ED initiated the money laundering investigation on the basis of an FIR registered on March 3 last year by South Cyber Economics and Narcotic Crimes Police Station against ‘Messrs Super Like Online Earning Application’ and other accused.
On January 13, police filed a chargesheet before the court of Principal City Civil and Sessions Judge, Bengaluru, against 50 accused people, including two Chinese nationals – Shen Long and Himani – in the case.
Giving details of the case, the spokesperson said customers of the application had to invest some money and share photos and videos of celebrities. They would then get money back as profits.
“By getting attracted towards this lucrative scheme, the common public invested funds in the app. After sharing videos of celebrities, they got some money as profits for some time,” the ED said.
However, later on, the customers did not get any returns even after sharing videos and photos. When they tried to witdraw their invested money, the app had blocked their amount, the spokesperson said.
“Thus, by cheating the common public, the accused people collected huge amounts of funds from the common public and did not return their money. Criminal activities related to scheduled offences were committed,” the spokesperson said.
