₹1,700 Million in Bank Deposits Seized in ED's Probe Against QFX/YFX Forex Fraud Scheme

The Indian federal agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), announced on Thursday that it has frozen bank deposits worth ₹1,700 million. This action follows raids conducted on February 11 at various premises in Delhi, Noida, Shamli, and Rohtak as part of a probe against QFX Trade Limited and its directors, Rajendra Sood, Vineet Kumar, and Santosh Kumar, along with one of the masterminds, Nawab Ali alias Lavish Chaudhary. 

The money laundering probe stems from multiple FIRs filed by the Himachal Pradesh Police against QFX Trade Limited, which is alleged to have defrauded many investors through a fraudulent forex trading and deposit scheme.

According to the ED, QFX and its directors were running an unregulated deposit scheme, promising high returns on investments to investors. The agents of the QFX group of companies operated a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme under the name of the QFX investment plan. They created websites, apps, and social media ads to attract investors by promising higher rates of return in the name of forex trading.

After the police FIRs were filed, the ED found that the name of the QFX scheme was changed to YFX (Yorker Fx) but continued with the same modus operandi, duping innocent investors by luring them with high rates of return under the guise of forex trading.

“In addition to QFX more fraudulent investment schemes are being run and controlled by Nawab Ali alias Lavish Chaudhary such as BotBro, TLC Coin, Yorker FX projecting them as forex trading apps/websites,” the ED stated. The agency also discovered that various events were organized in India and Dubai to lure more investors.

The probe revealed that multiple bank accounts of NPay Box Private Limited, Capter Money Solutions Private Limited, and Tiger Digital Services Private Limited were being used for the collection of funds from investors. The ED claimed these were shell or dummy companies used by the masterminds of the QFX/YFX scheme for receiving deposits from the public for investment in forex trading.

The directors of the company could not explain the source of the funds, so the ED froze the ₹1,700 million kept in about 30 bank accounts. Additionally, cash amounting to about ₹9 million was separately seized following searches against an agent of QFX/YFX.