The Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case to probe the alleged cheating of ₹3,700 crore by a Noida-based multilevel marketing company, against which the Uttar Pradesh police have registered an FIR. The company collected funds from more than 6.5 lakh investors promising good income from online promotion schemes.
Searches conducted
On Sunday, the ED conducted searches on the premises of the accused in Kanpur, Ghaziabad and Noida. While the Income-Tax Department is also conducting a probe, the Special Task Force of the U.P. police has already arrested three of the accused, including company director Anubhav Mittal, CEO Shridhar Prasad and technician Mahesh Dayal.
“According to their business model, they promoted a scheme through their web portal, whereby people could make money by liking web pages that were fraudulently shown to be associated with social media groups like Google and Facebook,” said an ED official.
The accused propagated a false story that the promotional web pages linked to these portals paid ₹6 per like, of which they pay ₹5 to the user. They also promoted four systematic investment plans offering various incentives depending upon the investment made by users.
The multilevel marketing and Ponzi schemes were run allegedly by Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Social Trade India Pvt. Ltd, 3W Digital Pvt. Ltd and Intmaart India Pvt. Ltd. “All these companies are the brain child of accused Anubhav Mittal, Ayushi Agarwal and their associates,” said the official.
Documents seized
The ED probe has led to seizure of documents confirming that the accused cheated their clients and invested in assets at various places. The company’s bank accounts having a total balance of ₹500 crore have already been frozen.
“The Directorate has also asked for transaction details of the accounts operated by the accused to investigate the money trail. All the movable and immovable assets of the accused will be attached provisionally under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to secure the investments made by the victims,” said the official.
