Two More Arrested In Rs 10 Cr Ponzi Scam; Check How The Firm Swindled Over 500 Depositors In Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Four days after Director and Promoter of M/s Auroxa Deal Multitrade (OPC) Pvt. Ltd. Babu Singh Kushwaha was apprehended from Gwalior, Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch on Thursday arrested two Upper Line members from their respective residences in Odisha’s Balasore district in an alleged Rs 10 crore cheating case.

The arrested have been identified as Sarat Kumar Nayak and Prabhat Ranjan Das.

All the three accused were produced before the Designated Court under OPID Act, Balasore, which remanded them to judicial custody.

An official release said that a case under Sections 406, 420, 467, 468, 471, 120 B of the IPC, Section 66 of the IT Act, Sections 4, 5, 6 of the PCMCS (Banning) Act, and Section 6 of the OPID Act was registered against Kushwaha and the two others on the basis of a complaint filed by Chandra Kanta Dash and others.

Investigation revealed that Kushwaha was the only director of M/s Auroxa Deal Multitrade (OPC) Pvt. Ltd. registered with ROC, Gwalior, in May 2019. The company had floated various lucrative schemes/ packages that promoted direct selling of various household goods/ electronic goods with high returns having cashback offers.

The deposits collected by the company under the cover of direct selling are nothing but Ponzi Schemes and Binary Schemes. The business model is a simple pyramid structure, that works as a binary scheme in which the early entrants earn money and as the number of investors/ depositors increases, the scheme collapses at a point in time. Thus, the deceit and fraud are camouflaged under the name of direct selling marketing and business, the release further said.

M/s Auroxa Deal Multitrade (OPC) Private Limited was functioning in a rented building near Suraj Hotel, Sahadevkhunta, Balasore, from 2019 to 2020 and Kushwaha and other promoters of the company motivated the newcomers/ investors to join various business packages and collected huge deposits from the public.

The company had collected more than Rs 10 crore from 500 investors and duped them subsequently.

Further investigation into the matter is underway, it added.