The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a chargesheet against thirty people, including two Chinese nationals, for allegedly cheating citizens during the Covid nineteen lockdown through a fake investment scheme. The case is linked to the HPZ Token Investment Fraud involving Shigoo Technology Private Limited, a company owned and controlled by Chinese nationals.
According to the agency, the accused launched a mobile application called “HPZ Tokens” and claimed that public investments would be used for cryptocurrency mining and would generate very high returns. In only three months, the fraudsters collected and diverted crores of rupees.
The investigation showed that this was part of a larger cybercrime network run by foreign nationals. The syndicate carried out several online scams after the Covid period, including loan app frauds, fake investment platforms and bogus online job schemes, all targeting Indian citizens.
The CBI had earlier arrested six people, identified as Dortse, Rajni Kohli, Sushanta Behra, Abhishek, Mohd Imdhad Husain and Rajat Jain. The chargesheet now includes thirty accused, among them the Chinese nationals Wan Jun and Li Anming, who held important roles in managing the operations.
Wan Jun was the director of Jilian Consultants India Private Limited, which was a subsidiary of a Chinese company. With support from Dortse, he created multiple shell companies, including Shigoo Technologies. The agency stated that “investigation has revealed that these shell companies became the conduit to collect and launder the proceeds of crime of major organised cyber frauds. The total money that had been moved from the bank accounts of these companies surpassed Rs 1000 crore in period of few months. These frauds were connected and controlled by a single organised criminal syndicate based overseas.”
The probe found that the group used advanced payment aggregation systems at a time when such technology was new in India. Payment aggregators were offering collection and disbursal services to genuine companies, and the fraudsters misused the system to move funds rapidly across several bank accounts. This also allowed them to return small amounts to investors to gain trust.
The syndicate hired professionals, including company secretaries, to set up the shell companies. The money collected was later converted into cryptocurrencies and transferred out of the country. The CBI has identified the masterminds involved and has chargesheeted twenty seven individuals and three companies.
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