With just 10 detectives under his leadership and in about three
weeks' time, Senior Superintendent of Police of Uttar Pradesh's Special Task Force
Amit Pathak cracked an online digital racket that swindled 600,000 people and
is now worth Rs 3,700 crore and counting.
Call it 'digital marketing', or
'get-paid-for-likes' scam, the fact is high-heeled,
well-educated scammers, suave in their use of technology, social media and a
solid grip
on the greed factor of the masses that works behind the success of such schemes,
a computer
scientist from NOIDA (North Okhla Industrial Development Authority), UP, which
is also
within kissing distance of the national capital, hoodwinked 600,000 people with
the carrot that
they can make 32 per cent on their initial investment every month, month after
month. Consider
the simple math and you will understand how greed preys upon people's psyche: Those
investing Rs 57,500 in this scheme for a month were promised a return of Rs 625
every day,
that is, 1.08 per cent daily. Multiply
this daily return (Rs 625) by 30 (days of a month), divide it by the original
investment (Rs
57,500) and multiply the answer by 100: The return is a mindboggling 32 per
cent per month. Mittal,
26, who is known for his flashy lifestyle -- he had invited Bollywood stars
Sunny Leone and
Amisha Patel for his birthday on November 29, 2016 at his Delhi bungalow -- had
devised his
schemes in a shrewd manner that allowed people, who could not afford to invest
a huge amount,
to invest in different slabs beginning with Rs 5,750, Rs 11,500, Rs 28,750, and
get proportionate
returns. Apart
from the monthly returns, investors were free to take away their initial corpus
at the end of
the year. Aren't
you already planning your next vacation in the Maldives? That's how greed
overwhelms common
sense!
This
is the greed factor that not just Anubhav Mittal, but many others before him,
have used
successfully
to swindle money by promising the moon. However,
Mittal's luck ran short, when Amit Pathak and his 10-member team of detectives began
following up on more than 4,500 emails to the Uttar Pradesh Special Task
Force's email ID
complaining about the wrongdoing by various companies floated by Mittal, from
across India,
and a full-blown, multi-billion crore scam began to manifest itself before the investigators. The
going was not very easy though as Mittal, a BTech in computer science, had made
every attempt
to obliterate his online footprint by hiding behind a web of companies that
went by the name
of 3W Digital Private Limited office, Ablaze Info Solutions Private Limited, or
kept changing
URLs from socialtrade.biz and later to frenzzup.com.
Amit Pathak, who spoke to Rediff.com's Prasanna
D Zore about the
details of the case
so far, finally blew the lid off this scam early February after working on it
for three weeks. The
UP STF has shared the data gathered from Mittal's offices and their investigations of four people
arrested in this case so far with the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate,
indicating there is more to this scam than meets the eye. Though
Pathak did not speak about the nature of the data shared with other
investigation agencies,
which naturally have jurisdiction over this scam, the ED has already filed a
case against
Mittal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act based on the first
information report
filed by the UP STF. Most
importantly, Rs 524 crore were recovered from Mittal's account in Yes Bank that
could yet get
the market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India and banking regulator
Reserve Bank
of India become a part of the investigations soon.
What can you tell us about the people you have arrested so far and
how did you
arrive at the Rs 3,700 crore figure?
These
are all technology-savvy, educated people who have made use of technology sufficiently well
to defraud people. Our
investigation of the arrested people revealed that this scam is worth Rs 3,700
crore and more. We
cross checked this with their bank accounts to reach the figure. We
recovered Rs 524 crore from his (Mittal's)
bank account and the Rs 3,700 crore scam involves
all the amount is right from the time he formed this company in 2015.
Out of the Rs 3,700 crore you are now left with Rs 500 crore. So,
where is the rest of the money?
A part of
this money has already been given to his customers to win their trust. In
return, these customers
got him more investors. Happy
customers help attract more customers who would keep the machine running. It is
possible that out of this total money collected over two years (Mittal floated
this business model in
2015) he must
have paid back Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 2,000 crore to his customers to win their
trust and keep the scheme going.
It is
quite possible that he could have shelved off or laundered Rs 1,000 crore for
himself too. Isn't
this money laundering? Using,
depositing other people's money and use that money to pay other people using
fictitious bank
accounts is laundering only.
Siphoning
money abroad?
No, most
of this money was laundered only in India to keep his ponzi scheme well-oiled.
The
kingpin/s of the scam...
We have
made four arrests yet in this case and Anubhav Mittal is the kingpin of this
entire
'digital
marketing' or 'get paid for likes' or 'clicking on links' racket. Apart
from the arrests of Anubhav Mittal, who is the director of 3W Digital Private
Ltd, his CEO Shridhar
Prasad and technical head Mahesh Dayal, we made one more arrest on February 8 (of Atul
Mishra, relationship manager, Yes Bank's Raj Nagar District centre, Ghaziabad). There can
be more people associated along with these four in this scam and they could be unearthed
in the coming days. But
Anubhav Mittal is the kingpin of this racket.
More
arrests, likely...
100 per
cent!
What more remains to be
unearthed?
The rest
of the amount remains to be unearthed. Where
have they spent or kept the rest of the amount; whether they have invested
their wealth into real
estate or any other place.
The team
that cracked this case...
We were
on this case since the last three weeks and 10 of my men worked diligently to
crack this case. When we
arrested these three, they were non-cooperative with the investigators. When we
confronted them with the evidence that we had they started to speak. We had
half the evidence with us before we made the arrests and these three then gave us
access to CPUs,
hard disks, and other electronic and digital material from their offices. We have
asked for the custody of this evidence gathered by our team and Anubhav Mittal
told us about
their modus operandi. We have
analysed and understood half the data gathered from the evidence and we need
some time to
understand more from the evidence that we have.
Insights
and data analysis...
There is
a huge connivance of bank people; there are clear instances of flouting of bank
norms; there is
a clear flouting of various warnings that were generated in the (bank's)
system and the bank
people overlooked it; there is violation of Companies Act; violation of Money
Circulation Scheme
(Banning) Act, 1978; violation of Income Tax rules, service rules.There
could be accountants and auditors, too, involved criminally with these people.
We have
deciphered and understood a lot of data we have gathered and we need to analyse
a lot more for
which we will need at least another month. But it
may take another six months to complete a thorough investigation of this scam.
The bank
from which the money was recovered...
The Rs
524 crore was recovered from Anubhav Mittal's account in Yes Bank, NOIDA
branch.
Anubhav
Mittal's political connections?
There are
no political connections of the four arrests we have made so far.
Prasanna D Zore / Rediff.com
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