BENGALURU: An investment firm owner and his four associates, who allegedly swindled a businessman of nearly Rs 12 crore after promising him high returns, have been arrested in south Benglauru.
The gang is suspected to have cheated over 800 people, including celebrities in sports and film industry, and the fraud could run into hundreds of crores of rupees. Banashankari police are drawing up a list of other victims before initiating proceedings.
The accused — Ragavendra Srinath, who operated Vikam Investments, and his associates
Narasimha Murthy, Prahalada, K C Nagaraj and
Sutram Suresh — claimed to be in the business of shares and commodities. Srinath had no licence to conduct commodities business, police said.
“All the accused were arrested last week. They will be in police custody till March 17,” an officer said.
P R Balaji, an agarbatti businessman and resident of
Chikkakalasandra, has filed the complaint. Learning that Vikram Investments gave good returns on investments, Balaji and his younger brother, Bhaskar, approached the company’s agent Narasimha Murthy in 2016. “We met Murthy in a hotel at
Jayanagar 7th Block and Murthy convinced us to invest in their firm. They initially gave us good returns and later Raghavendra Srinath encouraged us to invest more. We invested Rs 11.2 crore through our
Balaji Agarbatti Company and Rs 54 lakh from our individual bank accounts. But they neither pay any returns as promised nor give back the amount,” Balaji said.
Police have requested people conned by the accused to file complaints with their jurisdictional police stations.
