"During the raid, a large call centre was uncovered, which was involved in Ponzi schemes and investment fraud," the agency said in a statement.

"Through this fraudulent network, the public was being deceived and vast sums of money were being illegally collected."

The agency said they were acting on a tip-off about the network, operating in the city of Faisalabad, a manufacturing centre in the east of the country.

The agency told AFP that the raid was at the residence of Tasheen Awan, the former head of the city's power grid, who has not been arrested.

All those arrested were in custody, including 78 Pakistanis and 48 Chinese, as well as citizens from Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

Some 18 of the 149 were women, it added.

A copy of the police report said victims would initially receive a small return on their first investments, before being persuaded to hand over larger sums of money.

"The charged individuals ran WhatsApp groups where they lured ordinary people by assigning small investment tasks like subscribing to different TikTok and YouTube channels," it said.

"Later, they shifted them to Telegram links for further online tasks requiring larger investments."