Online Financial Scam: EOW Nabs Cheat from Kerala for Duping Odisha Investors

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha police arrested the director of a shell company from Kerala on Monday for his involvement in a major online ponzi scam that has duped several investors from Odisha. The arrested accused Dileep Kumar (35) runs a Kerala-based shell company named PRIWEST GLOBAL SOLUTION PVT LTD. He is also the Founder cum Managing Trustee of OMANA FOUNDATION PUBLIC CHARITABLE TRUST, Coimbatore.

Over 800 investors from Ganjam district had complained that they were supped by him. He is being brought to Odisha on six days’ transit remand. He will be produced before the Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (OPID) court in Berhampur.

As per the FIR, the accused had defrauded lakhs of investors across the country by asking them to register with 18football.com (a gaming app) in the name of football betting for earning quick returns. Investigation revealed that the accused’s company was being utilised to channelize the ill-gotten money of this scam.

Investigation by the EOW has revealed that around Rs 19.49 crore have been cheated away using this company. The charitable trust was being used to channelize the money procured through fraud.

This was a hybrid model of fraud where Ponzi scheme was running online through a website which registered in HONGKONG (China), which also operated from Dubai.

Investors were promised of lucrative benefits like 3% daily compound return on investment, recharge bonus, referral bonus, extra bonus on the earning of the down- line members, salary bonus, daily withdrawal option etc with a designated toll free number 18003457103. They were asked to create an account with “18football.com” either by

application or through offline referral link, and were being asked to bet money in some football matches as prescribed in website/ APP.

The fraudsters although initially paid the promised return for some few

days to the investors, yet in the latter stage when the membership increased, stopped making any payment and closed the app.

Earlier in this case, two directors of Kolkata based shell company “Hakim & Rustam Fabrics Pvt. Ltd” and one director of a shell company “Edudaddy Institute of Advance Studies Pvt Ltd” had been arrested from Kolkata and Udaipur in Rajasthan, respectively.