NEW DELHI: Sitting in front of multiple computer screens in a dim Noida apartment, three men lived out their own version of Netflix’s Money Heist, running an investment scam syndicate.
Codenamed after the show’s iconic characters, they robbed the digital vaults of unsuspecting investors across India. “Professor” wasn’t a fictional genius in a red jumpsuit—he was Arpit Mishra, a practicing advocate from Jaipur who allegedly masterminded the syndicate worth around Rs 150 crore.
Police say, to date, they have linked more than 12 fraud cases amounting to Rs 30 crore.
Alongside him were his associates: Prabhat Vajpayee, alias “Amanda”, the tech brain handling multiple devices and fake online trading platforms at once; and Mohammad Abas Khan from Manipur, the field operator who handled a web of 150–200 bank accounts opened under stolen identities. Mishra paid them Rs 25,000 a month each for their services.
They wove a con, sleek and sinister, impersonating finance professionals, luring victims through WhatsApp groups with promises of stock market riches, and then vanishing with evidence into thin digital air.
After receiving the money, the scamsters would lock the victim’s trading account on the pretext that additional fees were required. They even threatened to donate the invested money to a charity if the victim failed to pay more.
When one victim wired Rs 21.77 lakh to what he thought was a “Direct Market Account”, his funds were frozen, trading portal locked, and pleas met with threats of “charitable donations” unless he paid more. His panicked call to cops helped expose the fraud.
The investigation revealed a fascinating script: digital trails from Noida to Guwahati and, finally, to Siliguri. Inside the Noida flat, police found Vajpayee and Khan busy in an operation—phones lit with real-time transactions, computer screens running numbers constantly. Officers smartly threw the devices into airplane mode to stop remote wipes. By the time “Professor” Mishra was arrested in Siliguri on October 29, the plot had fully unravelled.