The Economic Offences Wing of the Goa Police has busted a Ponzi scheme that had duped around 400 people from across the country promising high returns and prizes to investors by offering to gamble their money in Goa-based casinos and return them the winnings.
Four persons -- Dasarath Boora the alleged mastermind, Adi Ganesh the official head of the company, Fakruddin their Goa agent and Sandeep their IT expert -- have been arrested.
The accused persons are from Suryapet and Nalgonda in Telangana and Hosur in Tamil Nadu who were earlier real estate agents. They had worked as agents in other ponzi schemes in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra before they decided to start their own scheme, police said.
Police are also on the lookout for their agents based in other parts of the country while also examining the role of one local staff who was involved in their marketing operations in Goa.
According to Superintendent of Police Shobit Saksena, the four confessed to operating a Ponzi scheme under the guise of an online gateway to casinos in Goa.
“Upon interrogation of the accused persons it was established that although they had fashioned their scheme as a scheme for investment in casino games, it was actually a money-circulating, multi-level marketing and ponzi scheme where they were just transferring parts of funds received as investments from new customers to their old ones,” Saksena said.
{{/usCountry}}“Upon interrogation of the accused persons it was established that although they had fashioned their scheme as a scheme for investment in casino games, it was actually a money-circulating, multi-level marketing and ponzi scheme where they were just transferring parts of funds received as investments from new customers to their old ones,” Saksena said.
{{/usCountry}}According to Saksena, the accused hatched a plan to exploit the unique and attractive casino tourism of Goa by offering people outside the state to be able to play and invest in these casinos. Besides, high returns the schemers also promised investors prizes like free entry into casinos in Goa, hotel stays and air tickets to Goa, iPhones, scooters, aspirational motorcycles and cars to existing investors for getting new customers.
“As per their plan they were going to take investments for up to three months by when they had estimated they would have made up to Rs. five crores and then would have simply shut shop and abscond,” Saksena said.
“They had over 400 customers across seven states including Goa who had invested over Rs one crore in less than a month. Since, the scheme was less than a month old, a major loss of hard earned money of the people was prevented,” he added.
All their known bank accounts have now been frozen and they have been slapped with cases under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, Goa protection of Investments of Depositors Act and Prize Chit and Money Circulation Schemes Banning Act.
All the operations were carried out online through their website www.dream2casino.com which after registering a user could track his ‘investments’, pay out statements opt for different schemes and tabulate potential earnings.
“The fraudsters used the website to generate daily pay out statements and check the spread of their scheme, monitoring the work of their inter-state agents. The mastermind stated that they had several agents in various states who were bringing in investment and getting their commissions on a daily basis,” Saksena said.
Earlier in January, the team held several gala meetings with their investors and agents in a prominent city based hotel.