Rajasthan businessman held for ‘link’ with football betting racket

BHUBANESWAR: The economic offences wing (EOW) of the state crime branch on Tuesday arrested Naveen Poriwar, a businessman from Udaipur in Rajasthan, for his alleged link with an online football betting racket operated by cyber scammers from China and Dubai.
The company (www.18football.com), which was into betting, gambling and chit fund business through the website, allegedly duped thousands of people of over Rs 1,000 crore across the country, including in Odisha.
“We have found that Poriwar is the director of a shell company registered in Kerala. More than Rs 11 crore was routed to different accounts with the help of Poriwar’s shell company. Recently, we had arrested two directors of a Kolkata-based shell company for their links with the international betting scam,” inspector general (EOW) J N Pankaj said.
According to the modus operandi, the company would entice people to bet on some online football matches being played in China to earn quick money.
“We have found that a large number of people across the country, including over 1,000 in Odisha, invested money on the illegal and dubious online football betting platform. The amount collected by the company would be over Rs 1,000 crore in the country. So far, we have got evidence of cheating to the tune of Rs 300 crore. In Odisha, we suspect that the company duped people, mostly in Ganjam district, of nearly Rs 1 crore,” Pankaj said.
EOW said the website is a hybrid model of fraud where a multilevel marketing scheme was run online in the guise of football betting or gaming app.
The investors were promised lucrative benefits like 3% daily compound return on investment, recharge bonus, referral bonus, extra bonus on the earnings of downline members, salary bonus and daily withdrawal bonus, among others.
The fraudsters initially paid hefty returns for some days to the investors to win their confidence. Later, they vanished after receiving huge deposits from the victims. The Bureau of Immigration last week issued a lookout circular against Mohammad Saif, a Dubai-based man, for allegedly operating the betting racket from the UAE.