Chennai: Hundreds fall victim to Rs 300 crore loan scam

CHENNAI: A major loan scam involving Ruby Gold Jewellers in T Nagar is unfolding with 1,500 people so far lodging complaints with the city police that the owner, Syed Ibrahim, had not returned the gold jewellery they had pledged to get interest-free loans.
Over the past three days, hundreds of people have queued up in front of the city police commissioner’s office demanding action against Ibrahim, who has locked his shop and home and fled. Police sources said the scam could be worth hundreds of crores as Ibrahim is estimated to have collected some 1,000kg of gold worth more than ₹300 crore from more than 3,000 people over the past three years. Ibrahim portrayed himself as a pious Muslim who refused to charge interest. He would say he was doing this as charity. He would lend money, which would be onethird the value of the gold pledged, for three months, six months or one year.
Case may go to Economic Offences Wing
For more than a year now, there were complaints that he was not returning their gold jewellery even after people had returned the sums borrowed. But no one took legal action until rumours spread in the last few days that Ibrahim was planning to file for insolvency.
A police officer said, “Many people believed him a lot, pledged their jewellery and later returned the cash they had borrowed from him.” But, of late, he would just give them a receipt for the money returned and say he would call them once he located their jewllery, which he had stored somewhere safe.
One Chennai resident said he had got back a small piece of jewellery that he pledged some months ago after several visits to the showroom of Ruby Jewellers. He claimed the owner had told him he was having problems with cash liquidity in the wake of demonetisation and after the cyclone, though he did not specify which one.
Some time ago, Ibrahim went incommunicado. Soon, people started thronging his house at St Thomas Mount when they did not find him at his jewellery showroom near Duraisamy Subway. Three days ago, people found the shop locked and the house deserted.
As the value of the gold pledged runs into crores and the victims are from many parts of the state, the city police plan to transfer the case to the Economics Offences Wing CID.