Chinese national, Yah Hao, who was earlier arrested in Hyderabad on the allegations of duping by Chinese gambling apps has issued statement. The Indian Wire, in its report on August 27, 2020 had reported that Chinese gambling apps are posing a serious threat to personal data and security of Indian customers.
It had also reported that Hyderabad Police has arrested Yah Hao, representative of a Chinese app company Beijing T Company in connection with allegations of duping and data breach by gambling app of the said company.
In connection with the same arrest, Hao has made a statement that he does not know anything about gambling apps. He seems to have passed the buck to his superiors in China. He has only stated that he was sent to India for business purposes by his superiors in January for 15 days. However, owing to COVID outbreak in China, he decided to stay back in India for a longer period. Hao is Head of Operations for South East Asia Authorized Signatory for his company.
He also added that his company deals with apps but did not disclose any specific details regarding those apps. He did not respond to any of the questions on money trail and directed those questions to his bosses based in China.
Police are now following trails of his bank transactions to ascertain various details and have also moved petition for custodial interrogation of Hao and his Indian counterparts Dheeraj Sarkar and Ankit Kapoor.
Anjani Kumar, IPS Commissioner of Police Hyderabad City issued statement, “An investigation was carried out and it was found that the online game was being organised through the initiation of prospective gamers through Telegram groups. Entry was by reference only and members who introduced a new person would receive a commission”.
He further said “The entire technical operation is run by the China-based directors/partners of these companies. The payments were being routed through India based payment service providers/gateways. It is understood from the investigation so far that the companies are controlled through a firm called Beijing T Power Company based out of China. The total value of the inward transaction on the two accounts traced so far is nearly Rs. 1100 Crores, a majority of which is in the year 2020. Most of the remittances have been transferred to different other accounts which are being traced and some of the accounts are overseas. As of now, the total known overseas remittances is nearly Rs. 110 crore. The group was planning to register a company in the Cayman Islands”.
“In recent times, cases of suicide due to online betting have been reported from Telangana and other parts of the country which will be investigated from this angle. It is also possible that these groups are involved in other Cyber Crime activities like Phishing, running banned apps and dating apps etc” he added.