Digital Ponzi Scam Prime Accused Sentenced to 7-Yr in Jail by Balasore Court

Bhubaneswar: Prince Kumar, director of Digital Revolution Technologies Ltd, was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment by the OPID court, Balasore, on Saturday, for duping hundreds of investors in Odisha of around Rs.1.5 crore through false promises of high returns under its different schemes involving various digital/online products.

The court has also slapped Rs 3.33 lakh fine on Prince. In case of default in paying up the fine, he will have to spend one more year in jail.

Prince, an inhabitant of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, was arrested by the Odisha Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on May 18, 2023. His fraudulent company was duping investors of Odisha since March 2020.

According to EOW, this cheat also duped money from gullible investors in Maharashtra, Bihar, UP, Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh.

Prince claimed that he was running a desi digital company with its own versions of Whatsapp, YouTube, Amazon, email, online/digital gaming, digital payment and Netflix kind of products.

The company named/styled them as following:

1. Shopsubkuch- Ecommerce Website.
2. MYPay- mobile payment platform.
3. MyTube world- App for watching movies etc.
4. Vidscop- video sharing App.
5. Chitthi- sharing messages/ chat. Voice call/ video call etc.
6. GoGame11- Online gaming

The investigation, however, revealed that the deposits collected by the company under direct digital marketing were nothing but a Ponzi scheme. It used a simple pyramid structure in which the early entrants earn money and those who joined late do not earn enough to cover their first outlay.