COIMBATORE: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) police, Coimbatore, on Monday filed a petition before the special court under Tamil Nadu Protection of Interests of Depositors (in financial establishments) Act (TNPID), seeking seven days’ police custody of universal trading solutions (UTS) firm managing director in connection with cheating cases.
S Albert, deputy superintendent of police, EOW, filed the petition before the special court judge AS Ravi.
The managing director was identified as G Ramesh, 31, and was accused of cheating thousands of investors in Coimbatore and its neighbouring districts.
In June 2019, M Ramesh, 30, from Sivadhaniyapuram near Bharathiar University in Coimbatore lodged a complaint with the EOW police. He mentioned in his complaint that many people from Coimbatore city were cheated by the UTS firm located at Peelamedu.
He mentioned that the firm was started at Peelamedu in 2017 and it offered four schemes, including freedom, online, manual and fixed scheme.
As per the freedom scheme, if people invested Rs 1 lakh in the firm, they would get five percent of interest and five present of capital investment every month for 20 months. People who invested Rs 1 lakh in an online scheme would get 10 % of interest and 10 % of capital investment as return for every month for ten months.
For people, who invested their money in the manual scheme, they would get 12 % of returns in one year. If people invest Rs 50,000 under a fixed scheme, they would get Rs 1.50 lakh after one year.
Investors from Coimbatore, Tirupur, The Nilgiris, Erode, Salem districts and Kerala were lured by the schemes offered by the UTS firm. Around 1,000 people from Coimbatore invested Rs 10 crore under various schemes. The firm repaid the amount as per the schemes for a few months and stopped the payment for the last few months.
The EOW police officials conducted a search at the UTS office at Peelamedu and collected a lot of documentary evidence.
Based on the complaint, the police registered a case against G Ramesh, Kanagaraj, 21, director, Jaskar, director and Sunilkumar, general manager of the firm and all were booked under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and section 21 of Prize Chits and Money Circulation (banning) act and section 4 of the TNPID act.
So far the EOW police received 31 complaints from people, who in total lost Rs 38.20 lakh in 2019.
Since Ramesh obtained an interim stay from the Madras High Court to stop the EOW police proceeding against him, the police were not able to receive petitions from the victims.
In July 2020, Ramesh was arrested by Salem city police for cheating the investors in his another company named UTE (universal trading enterprises). He was lodged at the Salem central prison. The Madras High Court vacated the stay order on February 8, 2021 and the EOW police made a formal arrest on February 26.
Preliminary investigation revealed that he received Rs 1,103 crore from investors, who hailed mostly from Kerala, Coimbatore and its neighbouring districts. The details were collected by the Income Tax department officials who also identified his properties in Coimbatore. EOW police officials said that they were expecting petitions worth more than Rs 200 crores from the victims.