New Delhi: UP Special Task Force on Thursday busted one of the biggest online frauds claimed to be around Rs 3,700 crore which was being run under the guise of online social trading.

Three people have been arrested and further investigation is on.

Preliminary investigation revealed that a company by name Ablaze Info Solutions Limited, located in Noida Sector-63, duped around 7 lakh people after luring them to invest approximately Rs3,700 crore under the ‘Earn Rs 5 per click’ scheme.

"The accused persons were running a web portal — socialtrade.biz — where an investor has to pay from Rs 5,750 to Rs 57,500 in the company's account to become the member and earn Rs5 per click. So far, we managed to track around Rs500 crore and already seized the company's bank accounts," police said.

They used to constantly change their company's name to evade arrest. Some of the companies they floated to dupe people are: socialtrade.biz, freehub.com, intmaart.com frenzzup.com, 3W.com, etc. The members were being paid commission on the referrals in multi-level marketing (MLM) model and most of them brought in their own friends and family members, some with multiple accounts of Rs57,500.

The company stopped payments about a month ago and the members approached the police who arrested the kingpin Anubhav Mittal and his partners.

From Hyderabad and other districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, over one lakh people, mainly from middle class and employees are reported to have invested in Social Trade. Nearly seven lakh members data was found with the company. The company website is still live, but the customer care number is out of service.