Soon, a WhatsApp group was created, and she was added to it. Initially, her investments were small, and returns came on time. Sultana invested ₹1,000 and got ₹1,200 in a week. She then invested ₹3,000 and was told she had to keep investing daily to be able to get her investments back. Sultana said she had to transfer the money to various UPI (unified payments interface) IDs available on the Loxam mobile app. Eventually, the returns stopped coming. The person, who had so far posed as an employee of the company and who would communicate through an Indian mobile number, stopped taking calls and dissolved the group. By that time, Sultana had invested and lost ₹2.3 lakh. “I filed a first information report (FIR) with the cyber-crime cell of the Hyderabad Police on 9 June,” Sultana said over the phone.

About four months later, the police managed to track down people involved in the Loxam app case, based on another complaint from a Hyderabad resident. Sultana hasn’t got her money back yet. According to the Hyderabad police, she had been made victim of an online investment scam run by a set of Chinese citizens allegedly in consort with Indians.

Sultana is one among scores of individuals falling for scams seemingly run by individuals from China with the help of Indian citizens. Be it loan apps with Chinese directors on board or multi-layered investment scams with Chinese individuals as the final…