Noida Ponzi scheme: ED attaches Rs 600 crore worth assets of Anubhav Mittal

Officials say Anubhav Mittal, managing director of Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt Ltd, masterminded an online scam of Rs 3,700 crore.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday attached assets worth around Rs 600 crore of online trading company managing director Anubhav Mittal for allegedly masterminding a Rs 3,700 crore scam.

Anubhav Mittal. (PTI)

The attached assets, according to the ED, include balances in 14 bank accounts totalling Rs 543.81 crore, a fixed deposit of about Rs 52 crore with a Hyderabad-based mobile Payment Gateway company named Paynear Solutions, and a villa at Jaypee Greens in Greater Noida, whose estimated worth is put at Rs 3.6 crore.

This case is also being investigated by Uttar Pradesh STF, Income Tax Department and the Serious Fraud Investigating Organisation. The ED said that “more attachments shall follow very soon”. The case was first highlighted when UP police made Mittal’s arrest in February this year.

Mittal, a resident of Ghaziabad, was a BTech computer science student when he floated his own company. Five years later, he came about the idea of online barter system, which was basically an online version of a ponzi scheme. The modus operandi was simple.

His company, Ablaze Info Solution Pvt Ltd, claimed that they were in the business of promoting social media penetration and internet popularity for small-time businesses through getting maximum ‘likes’ on Facebook. He lured investors with weekly returns and promise of bonus on bringing potential investors to the table.

“Anubhav Mittal had collected several thousand crores of rupees from the customers of his company by false inducements and later siphoned off the same by means of generating false bills, invoices with the assistance of various persons who are under scrutiny,” ED said in a statement.