New Delhi, Dec 10 (PTI) The CBI has filed a charge sheet against two Chinese nationals who were allegedly the masterminds of the HPZ Token Investment Fraud case in which over Rs 1000 crore were siphoned off through shell companies during Covid, officials said Wednesday.

The CBI has alleged that Shigoo Technology Pvt. Ltd., owned and controlled by Chinese, allegedly cheated the public during the Covid lockdown using a fake mobile application titled "HPZ Tokens", claiming that investments would be used for cryptocurrency mining and would yield very high returns.

CBI's investigation found that this was not an isolated incident but part of a large, well-coordinated cyber crime network operated by foreign nationals. This syndicate was responsible for several cyber scams targeting Indian citizens in post Covid period using loan apps, fake investment apps and platforms offering bogus online job offers.

Wan Jun and Li Anming had come to India to set up the company and infrastructure following which they left the country and operated the company remotely from abroad, the officials said.

Both never joined the investigation and remained fugitives, they said.

The syndicate was the fountainhead of several scams though which gullible citizens were cheated using a host of loan applications, fake investment apps and platform offering bogus online job offers.

When the CBI took over investigation, it immediately cracked down on its local operations arresting six persons -- Dortse, Rajni Kohli, Sushanta Behra, Abhishek, Mohd Imdhad Husain and Rajat Jain.

The investigations revealed a massive intricate web of operation in which all the 27 involved accused were unmasked. The CBI filed charge sheet against 30 entity including the two Chinese nationals and 27 other individuals besides three companies.

"Wan Jun was the director of a company Jilian Consultants India Private Limited which was a subsidiary of a Chinese entity Jilian Consultants. Wan Jun with the help of one Dortse successfully created several shell companies including Shigoo Technologies," the CBI spokesperson said in a statement.

The agency dug deep into the shady operations of the company which showed that the shell companies set up under the Chinese umbrella Jilian Consultants became a conduit to collect and launder the proceeds of crime of major organized cyber frauds with over Rs 1,000 crore moved within months through its accounts.

"These frauds were connected and controlled by a single organized criminal syndicate based overseas," the spokesperson said.

The CBI probe also exposed an organised and sophisticated use of Payment Aggregators which were in nascent stages of operations in the India.

The racket misused these aggregators to launder the money "at a high speed from the accounts of one shell company to other" and also allowed them to partially disburse the money back to investors so as to gain their confidence.

"The payment aggregation systems had just taken off in India, and the payment aggregators were providing large collection and money disbursal services using technology to genuine companies. The technology had allowed the users to access large number of bank accounts simultaneously," the spokesperson said.

Jilian Consultants also engaged professionals including company secretaries (CS) to create several shell companies which were converting the collected amounts into crypto before sending them out of the country. PTI ABS ZMN

HPZ token investment fraud: charge sheet alleges organised laundering of over Rs 1000 crore using shell companies and crypto. A charge sheet alleges an overseas organized syndicate used a fake HPZ Tokens app and a network of shell companies to collect and launder over Rs 1,000 crore. The scheme purported crypto-mining returns, relied on local corporate structures and professionals, exploited payment aggregators for rapid inter-account transfers and partial disbursements to investors, converted proceeds into cryptocurrency for transfer abroad, and names 30 entities including two foreign principals, 27 individuals and three companies.