Noida: Online betting racket busted, 16 held
New Delhi: Gautam Buddh Nagar police arrested 16 persons and busted an online betting racket that was being operated from a posh residential society in Noida, said police on Tuesday. Cops said that the gang has links in Dubai and used to lure people indulging them in online betting.
The gang would operate the online betting through a gaming application ‘Mahadev’, whose entire syndicate is worth over Rs 4,000 crore. The arrest has been made from a bungalow situated in sector 108 of Noida.
“Acting on tip-off, police raided the bungalow situated in sector 108 under sector 39 police station area and arrested 16 persons red handed while they were taking online bets,” said Harish Chandar, Deputy Commissioner of Police Noida.
According to police, the arrested accused have been identified as Tarun Lakheda, Rahul, Abhishek Prajapati, Akash Sahu, Himanshu, Anurag Verma, Vivek, Deepak Kumar, Vishal Sharma, Rawat, Divyapraksh, Harshit Chaurasiya, Akshay Tiwari, Neeraj Gupta, Aakash Jogi and Deepak.
During interrogations, police found that the mastermind of the online illegal betting app Mahadev Book is Saurabh Chandrakar. “His operations in India are handled by Sachin Soni. Chandrakar used to provide bank accounts, fake sim cards, mobile phones and laptops to the miscreants. We have recovered 12 laptops, 73 smart phones, 19 cheque books, 6 passbooks, 90 ATM cards, 58 sim card, six passports, a Creta and a Thar along with other important documents from the spot,” Chander added.
The whole racket was being operated from a three storey rented bungalow. “They had floated links on telegram channel and WhatsApp through which the user connect them. They provide different websites through which bettings can be placed after the user gets an user id made. The customer is then asked to pay through different modes. The minimum amount is Rs 100. The customer used to share the payment receipt and then place online bets in games like cricket, tennis, football and others,” the DCP said.
Police said that if a customer places a bet of huge amount, the accused used to block his id and take away his money. So far, it has been found that in the last two months, the accused have transferred more than Rs 405 crore into different account through 26 bank accounts, said police.
