The Federal Investigation Agency has claimed to have a gang of three people on the suspect of selling fake dollars online. The raid was conducted by the agency’s cybercrime circle Lahore in an operation.

The development was made on the complaint of a citizen Qazi Abdul Rafay.

“An online money exchange through www.exchangedots.com on social media is being run by a person namely Fahad and his gang members, Sohail Abid and others,” said the first information report (FIR) registered with CCRC, Lahore.

It alleged that the suspects were providing fake US currency to the customers.

The complainant, in the FIR, said that he contacted the suspects mentioned in the report when he needed dollars that were shown to them via WhatsApp. He claimed that he gave more than Rs1.5 million for $6,000, out of which Rs1.3 million was given as net payment and Rs230,000 was transferred to the bank account of Abid.

It added that the suspects gave $5,000 to the complainant and they promised to give $1,000 to him “give soon”. Rafay claimed that he came to know about the bogus currency the next day.

“I made a call to Sohail Abid and told him that he has given me fake currency notes,” it said, “in response, he threatened me by saying that he know about the fake currency but he will never change them to the original and do what you can.”

The complainant urged the crime agency to take legal action against them and recover his money back.

The probe revealed that the suspects used to publicise their advertisements through social media for the exchange of foreign currencies like the US currency and come in contact with the person who needed money through the same platforms.

The case was registered under sections 13 (making, obtaining, or supplying device for use in offence) and 14 (unauthorized use of identity information) of The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, sections 109 (punishment of abetment if the Act abetted committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document), 489-B (using as genuine, forged or counterfeit currency-notes or bank-notes), and 489-C (possession of forged or counterfeit currency-notes or bank-notes) of the Pakistan Penal Code.