CHENNAI: Small-time actress Leena Maria Paul, who gained more coverage over her conning spree in Chennai along with partner Sukash Chandrasekaran, is in news again. The details are pretty much the same, only that it is the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police who have arrested her for an alleged scam, along with five others.
Interestingly, among those arrested is Sekar Chandrasekhar (25), who shared the 32nd floor apartment with the 26-year-old at a highrise in Goregaon West in Mumbai. It is not yet clear if Sekar is Sukash himself, assuming a new name in a new city.
Though the Mumbai police only say that the gang has defrauded about 1,000 people to the tune of several crores, an indication of the scale of the scam came from the seizures they made from Leena and Sekar: nine luxury and super luxury cars, including Maserati, Bentley, Audi and Mercedes worth Rs 5 crore, a whopping 117 imported watches worth over Rs 1.17 crore and 12 premium mobile phone handsets worth Rs 37.40 lakh.
In all, property worth Rs 6.50 crore was recovered from the six arrested persons. According to the police there, the officials received information on May 29 that Sekar and his associates, who ran a company named Lion Oak India, were cheating gullible investors with schemes that assured 20% returns every month and a reward of a Tata Nano. These schemes were rolled in different names like Lucky Number 05, Special Harvest Week, Super Harvest Plus, Weekly New Year Bonanza, Christmas Santaclaus, Onam Special, etc, collecting funds ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 5 lakh. Learning this, officials from the Economic Offences Wing conducted searches at the office in Andheri and their residence on the same day. Police claimed they seized a large number of documents related to the illegal money circulation schemes. Leena and Sekar were arrested later in the day.
On Monday, the police raided the premises of their associates - Adil Hussain Akhtar Jaipuri (24), Akhtar Hussain Jaipuri (55), Nasir Mumtaj Jaipuri (50) and Salman Pheroz Rizvi (28). In all, over 400 documents, including investment certificates and manuscript of calculation were seized. They, too were, arrested. On Tuesday, the ACMM, 47th Court, Esplanade, Mumbai, remanded the six to police custody till Thursday.