BHUBANESWAR : The Economic Offences Wing of Crime Branch has arrested the managing director of Mutual Alliance Global Pvt Ltd on charges of duping around 200 investors of a whopping Rs 5 crore on the pretext of doubling their deposit amounts.
The accused, Dhananjaya Sahoo, was arrested from Khairtabad in Hyderabad on February 21. The EOW had registered a case on January 31 after receiving a complaint from one of the investors Govinda Chandra Sahoo.
A native of Bhandaripokhari, Sahoo had opened five companies - Mutual Alliance, Goodland Happy Home Infra Ltd, Goodland Construction Pvt Ltd, Purifio Technology Pvt Ltd and Coinex Technology Pvt Ltd between 2011 and 2021.
EOW officials said Sahoo used to persuade the depositors to invest in real estate marketing/blockchain in real estate market, e-commerce and online gaming platforms on the promise of receiving exorbitant profits. In 2020, he formed Mutual Alliance with its office at Chintamaniswar area in Bhubaneswar.
The accused and his associates organised several meetings in different hotels here to lure the general public to invest in Mutual Alliance to receive double of their invested amounts in just 10 months. In a bid to gain the investors’ trust, he also issued post-dated cheques with promised amounts and executed agreements to double their deposits.
As managing director of Mutual Alliance, Sahoo collected unregulated deposits to the tune of Rs 5 crore from about 200 investors in Cuttack, Khurda, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj districts in 2020 and 2021, investigations further revealed.
Initially, the accused made some payments to the depositors but later stopped giving them money and fled before closing down his office here. To evade arrest, he hid in different states. “Dhananjaya Sahoo was arrested from Khairtabad in Hyderabad on February 21. He was brought to Odisha and produced before OPID court in Cuttack on Monday,” said an EOW officer.
Many incriminating articles like laptop, mobile phone, pen drive, ATM cards and his passport were seized. Further probe is continuing, he said. EOW officials said the accused had earlier visited foreign countries like Dubai, Thailand and Germany.
In another development, Commissionerate Police’s Cyber Crime and Economic Offence police station here arrested three fraudsters for cheating a citizen of Rs 11.62 lakh on the promise of providing him higher returns by investing his money in online trading.