Chandigarh: The Chandigarh unit of Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday arrested a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli in the multi-crore QFX forex trading scam, nearly a week after the mastermind, Harinder Pal Singh, was nabbed.Navab Hassan, the UP-based agent, was sent to nine-day ED custody by a special PMLA court in Chandigarh on Friday. According to the agency, Hassan played a key role in misleading people and mobilising public deposits to launder proceeds of crime through the QFX scam, also known as the YFX, BotBro, BotAlpha, Crossalpha and Minecrypto scam, the ED said in a statement. Harinder Pal Singh had disclosed Hassan as the leading agent of west UP. The ED had initiated an investigation on multiple FIRs registered across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam. By promising monthly returns of 5-6% through robot/AI-bot-based forex trading, the accused had been using payment aggregators and virtual currencies like USDT to collect funds. Once invested, the IDs are deleted, payouts are halted after a few months, and the proceeds of crime generated from the investment are diverted to the UAE to purchase properties in the names of close associates of the main accused and for luxury spending. The ED investigation revealed that Hassan operated as a senior field leader at the rank of “Blue Diamond Executive” and built a base of more than 10,000 investors under him. He collected cash and funnelled investments earlier via payment aggregators and later through USDT, while coordinating with the Dubai-based masterminds — Lavish Chaudhary, also known as Nawab, and his associates. He stated that no real forex trading ever took place on the platform and that investor dashboards reflected notional balances while new collections were used to service pending payouts. He was a frequent traveller to the UAE to meet Chaudhary and was planning to travel to Dubai again. He also participated in Zoom call meetings along with Chaudhary to inspire confidence and trust in new investors. Earlier, a search at his house in Shamli led to the recovery of Rs 94.23 lakh of proceeds of crime generated by defrauding common investors. MSID:: 124157879 413 |