14 booked for running Ponzi scheme in Manesar

GURGAON: Fourteen employees of a Manesar-based financial company were booked on Saturday for allegedly cheating 33 people out of surrounding areas of nearly Rs 20 crore by running a Ponzi scheme.
Police said that the accused, belonging to the Mahadev Mutual Benefit Company, have been charged under four counts of fraud and more cases are likely in the coming days. The cases were registered after a one-and-a-half-year probe into the allegations by the economic offences wing (EOW) of the Gurgaon police.Police commissioner Navdeep Singh Virk said that a special investigation team (SIT) has been formed to probe the case, which will submit its report within one month.
According to police, Mahadev Mutual Benefit Company convinced the investors to place money by offering double returns in a short period of time. In order to win people’s trust, the company did return the promised amounts initially. Seeing this, more villagers invested in the scheme. However, after collecting the money, the staff allegedly closed the office and fled with the villagers’ investments.
In 2013, four residents of Manesar had filed a complaint, alleging that they had been cheated out of Rs 50,000 each by the firm. Police said that during the course of the investigations, more people who had been cheated came forward to file complaints. The complainants alleged that the accused had set up a real estate firm with the money.
One of the complainants, Colonel Parvat Singh, who had invested Rs 1 crore in the scheme, said he had recently met police commissioner Navdeep Singh Virk to push for a speedy investigation, but that he had dismissed the concerns. “When we met the police commissioner, he said it was not a criminal case. Only after we met our local MLA (Pataudi), Bimla Chaudhary, and MP Rao Inderjit Singh, was an FIR registered. If we do not get justice soon, people who were duped will start a protest,” Parvat Singh said.
Virk denied the charges. “We registered the cases as soon as we received the complaints and have also formed an SIT headed by ACP Dalbeer Singh for a quick investigation,” said Virk.