KASARGOD: Kasaragod police arrested a key accused in the multi-crore pyramid scheme run through an Android app called My Club Trades (MCT). Muhammed Faisal, 32, the third accused in the case, was arrested as soon as he landed in Bengaluru from a Gulf country, said Kasaragod DySP P Balakrishnan Nair. He had fled the country soon after Manjeshwar police registered a case of cheating in May 2021. My Club Trades or MCT, which its website says has an office in Bangkok, took deposits from people across Kerala, Karnataka, the UAE and in Thailand by promising preposterous returns of 264% to 475% in a year, he said.
In Kasaragod alone, around 4,300 persons had lost around `47 crore, said the then Kasaragod DySP P P Sadanandan, an expert in financial fraud. “But the scam could be at least `500 crore,” he told TNIE. The police came to know of the fraud when a few depositors kidnapped Mohammed Javed, 28, an agent of the app from Udyawar in Manjeshwar, to recover the lost money.
Though the app has an office in Bangkok, police said they suspected the pyramid scheme was run by people in Malappuram. Muhammed Faisal is a native of Kalikkav in Malappuram. “There are 13 accused in the case and we have arrested eight so far,” said DySP Balakrishnan.