Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) here on Thursday arrested two persons, Ripan Kumar Jena and Anupam Pradhan, for allegedly duping over 30 investors in Odisha’s Balasore district of Rs 40 crore on the pretext of online trading investment.
Jena, who holds an MBA degree, is the managing director of Omm Agency and GRSS Greentech Pvt Ltd with its office at Uttareswara, Balasore. He along with his co-accused Pradhan, who is a postgraduate in Hindi, and others collected deposits from people by promising lucrative monthly returns of 8% mutual profit on the amount invested online in FOREX trading, buying shares and crypto, an EOW release said, adding that they were nabbed on the basis of a complaint lodged by Jitendra Kumar Das of Fakirmohan Nagar, Balasore.
To win the trust of the investors, the accused persons used to issue money receipts and post-dated cheques to the depositors and also executed agreements. They illegally collected more than Rs 4 crore from 35 investors in Soro area alone from 2019-21. They paid the promised returns to the investors for few months. Thereafter, they stopped making any payment and went incommunicado by shutting the office. The money was being transferred to the account of Omm Agency and personal accounts of the two accused, the release further said.
During investigation, many incriminating documents like money receipts, agreements, PDCs, and hard disc of the computer used by Jena were seized.
Further investigation is underway.
