Hyderabad: Officials from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted search operations on the premises of Hyderabad-based Coda Payments India Private Limited (CPIPL) for allegedly collecting a large sum of money from children in the garb of providing mobile games and thereafter transferring the amount to an overseas bank account.
The ED also froze the cash balance amounting to Rs.68.53 crore of the company. Coda Payments operates video games under various titles such as Garena Free Fire, Teen Cotton Gold, and Call of Duty and collects money from participants. When children are hooked to these video games, the money is taken away from their bank accounts unknowingly in the garb of selling digital tokens.
Once the video game is played successfully, a pop-up appears on the participant's mobile phone. The pop-up lures the participant to go for further transactions. In the rush to play the game, if the child clicks on the OK button, the money vanishes from the bank accounts without the participant's consent or approval.
The company CPIPL stated that its role is to collect money from the participants of the video games and transfer the same to the bank account of Coda Payments Singapore Pvt. Ltd., which is headquartered in Singapore. To date, the ED detected that the company had collected Rs.2,850 crore in the country and in the name of taxes and profits, Rs.2,265 crore was transferred abroad. ED officials have confiscated user IDs related to bank accounts, fixed deposits, and payment gateways belonging to the company.
Meanwhile, an investigation conducted by the Cyberabad police led to the unravelling of the fraud. A retired National Police Academy officer and his daughter lost money to the tune of Rs.11.50 lakh. The retired officer then registered the complaint with the Cyberabad police in September 2021.
During the investigation, the Cyberabad police detected the money trail went up to the Mumbai bank accounts of Coda Payments India Private Limited. On the other hand, the victim's grandson while playing video games had allegedly emptied the bank account as part of the payments to Coda Payments India Private Limited.
Police contacted Coda Payments India Private Limited company in Singapore to recover the money and asked them to transfer the amount to the victim's bank account. Similarly, several such complaints were registered against CPIPL across the country. The Hyderabad Enforcement Directorate had registered a case against the company, besides searches were also conducted across the country, including Chennai, and Mumbai.
