Hyderabad, Feb 8 (IANS): Cyberabad Police on Monday claimed to have busted a racket led by two Chinese nationals as kingpins that cheated people across India by enticing them with huge returns on investments.

Three accused have been arrested in the case while the search is on for the absconding accused including the Chinese nationals.

The economic offences wing of Cyberabad Police busted the racket being run in the name of 'Shared Bike (BK)'/ 'Sharing Economy'.

Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar told reporters that the accused cheated around 20,000 people all over the country to the tune of Rs 50 crore.

The accused had three attractive investment schemes to lure investors. On investment of Rs 300, Rs 3,000 and Rs 15,000, they promised high returns of Rs 1,350, Rs 13,500 and Rs 67,500, respectively, over a period of 90 days.

Since people were initially reluctant, the fraudsters deposited money into the bank accounts of some of the investors to gain the trust of others.

Police have frozen Rs 3 crore in 10 bank accounts connected with the crime and also seized four laptops and three mobile phones.

A case of cheating and criminal breach of trust has been registered at Raidurgam police station. Police booked the case under sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 5 of Telangana State Protection of Depositors of Financial Establishments Act, 1999.

The arrested include one Uday Pratap, 41, a resident of Gurugram, Haryana. He is the authorised signatory for an account of Mobicentric Technologies in a private bank in Hyderabad which is one of the fraudulent companies and he is also director of Corporfountain India Pvt Ltd, Gurugram.

The other accused are Nitesh Kumar Kothari, 36, of Delhi and Rajesh Sharma, 36, of Gurugram.

According to the police, the three accused were working under the control of the absconding Chinese nationals - Zhang Hongwei alias Peter and Peng Guowei alias Javie.

Police said Nitesh Kumar and Rajesh Sharma are involved in the mobile application development of - www.ciciseo.com - and are current directors of Adstuck Consulting Pvt Ltd.

Uday Pratap and Peng Guowei are the present directors of Corporfountain India Pvt. Ltd.

In January 2020 Peng Guowei left India and did not return due to international travel restrictions while Zhang Hongwei never came to India. The accused launched a shared bike app and started cheating people contacting each other through Skype and Whatsapp.

Peng Guowei is associated as additional director with Mobicentric Technologies Pvt Ltd, Lighting AD Pvt Ltd, Adstruck Consulting Pvt Ltd, Prespective Solution Pvt Ltd, IMOBI, Tech India Pvt Ltd, Corporfountain India Pvt Ltd, and Inavit Services LLP.

The police commissioner said verification with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) showed that the addresses of the companies are fake and they do not exist. All the firms have been registered with RoCs at Delhi, Kanpur, Pune and Bangalore.