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Saadur Rehman, the popular YouTuber known as Ducky Bhai, was arrested early Sunday at the Lahore airport. A case has been registered against him by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) for promoting online gambling and betting applications.

He was also presented before a judicial magistrate on Sunday afternoon. The court granted the NCCIA his two-day remand. The agency has been directed to present him before the court again on Tuesday, Aug 19 with an investigation report.

The case was registered by the state through the NCCIA Lahore at midnight on August 17 under sections 13 (Electronic Forgery), 14 (Electronic Fraud), 25 (Spamming) and 26 (Spoofing) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 as well as sections 294 B (Offering prize in connection with trade) and 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducting delivery of property) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The case is related to an inquiry dated June 13 and registered on the “receipt of information from reliable source(s)” that some YouTubers and social media influencers were promoting gambling and betting applications to the general public via their social media accounts for their own monetary benefits.

The FIR claimed that the public invested their hard earned money in these applications due to this and suffered financial losses. It accused Rehman of promoting different gambling and betting applications, including Binomo, 1xBet, Bet 365, B9 Game etc through his Youtube channel.

A total of 27 video links from his account that purportedly promoted these applications were included in the FIR, several of which are no longer available to view.

Despite collecting millions of rupees, it said Binomo and other apps “committed fraud/scam” and didn’t pay any profits against the public’s investments, determining that this constituted the public being defrauded.

It also noted that the applications were not registered in Pakistan yet. The FIR said Rehman had been summoned but “deliberately” did not join the inquiry proceedings. His name was placed also on the Provisional National Identification List.

On August 16, the agency received information from the FIA Immigration at Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore that the accused had been detained upon marking out through the IBMS System while trying to leave the country. He was arrested and his phone seized, and a preliminary investigation found evidence of chats with contacts related to Binomo promotions, as well as evidence of illegitimate payments from the app as well as “misleading videos”.

“It is also revealed that the accused is working as s country manager assigned by the Binomo management without taking any authorisation from the government institution, either from FBR or State Bank of Pakistan.”