FIA arrests two in mega online fraud

From Our Correspondent

KARACHI: Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested two people allegedly involved in an Rs200 million scam in the name of the online business.

According to the FIA officials, the corporate crime circle of the FIA carried out a raid in FB Area and Gulshan-e-Iqbal and arrested two people identified as Owais and Salman.

“Both of them are director and CEO of the online companies used to defraud public,” the officials said. A case has been registered with the FIA against the suspects for making suspicious transactions of Rs200 million.

Two days back, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) detected an online fraud of USD100 million using a cryptocurrency and issued notice to the local representative of Binance.

Sharing details of the fraud, Additional Director of the FIA cybercrime wing Imran Riaz said that those involved in the online fraud transferred the money abroad via cryptocurrency.

“We launched a probe after receiving complaints regarding a fraud involving billions of rupees being committed using nine online applications,” he said and added that they had sought answers in this regard from a representative of the cryptocurrency in Pakistan.

He shared that people invested between US$100 to US$80,000 in fraud applications. “Those who developed these apps were linked to cryptocurrency,” the FIA official said.

He said that they have sought details of all those linked to the fraud with the Binance cryptocurrency and their crypto accounts would be suspended.

The FIA official further shared that cryptocurrency is being used in money laundering and terror financing.