A Special Investigation Team ( SIT) will be constituted to probe the Rs 3700 crore online Ponzi fraud, Uttar Pradesh DGP Javeed Ahmed announced on Friday.
"UP STF busts 3700-crore internet based cheating racket across N India. 3 arrested. Will set up SIT for comprehensive investigation. Kudos STF," Javeed tweeted. The SIT would be supervised by Inspector General (IG) Crime and led by Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Meerut.
Unfazed by the entire episode, the main accused in the scam, Anubhav Mittal, has posted a video that is now circulating on WhatsApp groups. The video shows Mittal addressing investors and company officials telling them to have faith in him.
In the 38-second video, he names four female colleagues and others and said they need to stand with him.
"It is a two, three, four days bad phase for us. We will be back again, we will rock the world," he says in the video.
On Thursday, a team of STF raided the office of Ablaze Info Solutions Private Limited (AIS) at Noida Sector 63 and arrested Anubhav Mittal, managing director, Sreedhar Prasad, chief executive officer and Mahesh Dayal, technical head.
STF detected the fraud by Noida-based Ablaze Info Solutions Private Limited which was operating through online portal http://socialtrade.biz and later changed to http://frenzzup.com, a senior police official said here.
Email ID launched for victims
The UP STF has issued an email ID - reportfraud@upstf.com - for the victims of ponzi scheme. The officials said that the fraud victims can sent the details which will be incorporated in the investigation.
The video was supposedly made by Anubhav Mittal's colleague after his arrest.
On Friday, the accused were produced before a court which sent them to judicial custody.
Preliminary investigations found that most investors had not received the payment in January and a number of complaints queued up at the company's server. The investigators have also not got any evidence of business with any third party for promoting hits on latter's digital space.
During the probe, it was found that over 6.5 lakh people had deposited over Rs 3,726 crore in the company's accounts using over nine lakh IDs.
The STF has also started a detailed investigation into the case. A team of Serious Fraud Investigation Office and I-T officials visited the company's office in Sector 63 and scanned the documents.
Raj Kumar Mishra, DSP, STF-Noida, said the website of Social Trade - socialtrade.biz - has been deactivated for investigation purposes. "The company's mobile application has also been stopped," he said.
The victims of the fraud said that the company's owner portrayed himself as the "Mark Zuckerberg" (Facebook founder) of the country.
The task force has also sealed the bank accounts of the company, based in Sector 63 here, which had a total balance of Rs 500 crore, the STF's ASP Amit Pathak said.
