Suspected mastermind of fake Ponzi scheme held in Pak

Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency on Friday arrested suspected mastermind of a fake Ponzi scheme who defrauded people online of around three billion rupees.

FIA Additional Director Cybercrime Circle Mohammed Younis said Ghulam Sarwar was arrested just when he was leaving from his residence to board a flight to Saudi Arabia.

"He is wanted on charges of committing 'online electronic currency fraud' amounting to 3 billion rupees from Karachi," he said.

Younis said Sarwar is a primary suspect in the online fraud case which has affected more than 17,000 people in the country.

According to the FIA officials, the suspect along with other accomplices operated a fake website called 'Channel Timez', with its address shown in Italy, which they used to receive money from people on the pretext of providing lucrative returns on dollar investments.

Sarwar and his partners ran the illegal Ponzi scheme known as "MLM" (Multi Level Marketing) by using the a website for which they had opened several binary accounts for the collection of money from people, Younis said.

"The customers were promised they would be given a profit at the rate of 1.5 per cent in US dollars in electronic currency (e-currency) on a daily basis. Using this method this gang collected some three billion rupees from the customers," he said.

He said the gang was also involved in the illegal business of selling of digital currencies, including Perfect Money, One Life and One Coin, which have been prohibited by the State Bank of Pakistan.