ITANAGAR, Mar 3: The Itanagar Capital Police has arrested the kingpin of a Ponzi scheme scam (multi-level marketing scheme), which had duped some 6,000 investors of an estimated ₹17 crore.

The breakthrough in the multi-crore Ponzi Scam that ran between July 2020 to April 2021 came with the arrest of kingpin Braj Kishore Chaudhury from Patna, Bihar, on February 23, including his accomplices, identified as Raju Dutta, Nishith Murthy, Joydeep Dutta, Santosh Kumar, Bipin Kumar, and Deepak Kar aka BK Sharma. With intensive investigation, multiple attempts, and technical surveillance, with the help of Bihar Police, the state police team managed to arrest the kingpin.

Speaking to the media, Superintendent of Police, ICR, Jimmy Chiram informed that following a complaint by one Ha Takio of Banderdewa on 17th April 2021, police filed a case. Takio had disclosed that, in 2020, he met one Raju Dutta at Guwahati who offered him to invest money in the share market through a company named Algo Academy, Bengaluru, Karnataka and was offered a return of 1 % per day on his investment. After a few months, he (Takio) was asked to make members under him in binary form and assured Rs. 200.00 on each member apart from the commission. The complainant believed the person and started investing in the company and also made members under him.

Initially, Takio got a return in his bank account but later the people started avoiding him. By that time, the complainant and other investors had already made an investment of Rs. 17 Crore through the members down the line, the SP said.

The investigation showed that Chaudhary and his gang had hatched a conspiracy to cheat innocent people of the state in the name of providing inordinate returns on their investment. The accused persons prompted the people to visit the website of a bogus company called Algo Academy. Chaudhary had visited Naharlagun in the month of December 2020 under the pseudonym Santosh Kumar and organized a seminar at a Naharlagun hotel to motivate more people to join the company and make investments. Around 6000 people have invested in the company and were cheated. The minimal amount of investment per person was Rs.3900 with an assurance of 1% return per day.

“The accused persons returned around Rs. 9 crores to the investors, however the amount to the tune of Rs. 8 crore was siphoned off. However, Police were able to trace the money to the tune of Rs. 71 Lakhs which was routed to 14 different accounts by the scamsters and it was frozen,” stated SP Jimmy Chiram.

Earlier three persons were arrested from across the country Page 2.. 

Kingpin of ` 17 Crore Ponzi...

....through technical surveillance and smart groundwork in other states like Bihar. Inspector AK Pandey had arrested Joydeep Dutta on 5th July 2021 from Silchar, Assam and Santosh Kumar on 20th September 2021 from Patna, Bihar. SI SS Jha and team had arrested Nishith Murthy (Director of the fake Company) on 22nd September last year from Bengaluru. 

The initial charge sheet was filed in 2021. However, arrests were pending for the kingpin, BK Choudhary. With his arrest, Capital police got a major success in the case. The investigation is still being carried for any other involvements, stated the SP.