2 more held in Ponzi scheme, fraud amount crosses Rs 170 cr

The ongoing probe into the first-of-its-kind ponzi scam in the name of organic farming practices and manufacturing organic products by creating a fake company that cheated gullible investors mainly farmers across the country of over Rs 100 crore by promising huge returns has led to the arrest of two more suspects on Wednesday. With this, the arrest in the scam reached eight as six were earlier arrested in the case in September this year.

Mohit Singla, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Detective), Khanna, said the suspects were identified as Dr DD Verma and Jagtar Singh. Both of them had invested the money looted by key suspects from the investors into properties. Despite the duo were aware that money being invested in a ponzi scam, they invested the money into the property business and helped other suspects in buying properties.

As per the police, the suspects had created nine fake companies related to organic farming with office addresses in Samrala but in reality those companies had no physical presence. The gang was, however, quite active on digital space through which they used to lure the innocent investors for multiple returns on the investment.

Earlier, Senior Superintendent of Police, Khanna, Jyoti Yadav, had said 21 bank accounts were freezed by the police in which transactions of Rs 122 crore took place in just seven months, from January to July this year. During further probe, the count of bank accounts had crossed 30.

Singla confirmed that now the fraud amount that include transactions and inflow of money from the investors had crossed Rs 170 crore and the amount freezed in the banks accounts was about Rs 74 lakh, which had now crossed Rs 1 crore.

The DSP said two days’ police remand of the suspects were sought from court for questioning and more revelations were expected in further probe.

Notably, the suspects had created several fake firms in different names, namely The Generation of Farming, Generation of Farming, Hope of Farming, Randhawa Enterprises, The GAF Trading Enterprises, Kisan of Punjab Agro Nursery, Generation of Fitness Lab, The GAF Family Care Products and the GAF Milk Products and even fake office addresses of these companies were given to the investors. Whenever any investor yearned to visit farmhouses or offices, they used to take them to farms and offices of other people.