HYDERABAD: Four fraudsters, who operated an online investment firm ‘STEMCOR MAX HEDGE’ and cheated around 2,500 persons to the tune of Rs 7 crore, were arrested by Cyberabad Police on Monday.
The victims belong to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and are working as assistant engineers in various government departments in both states.
The accused Nanda Kishore, Chittam Reddy Anand, Bhumireddy Avinash, and Tulluri Srinivas Rao floated the firm in July 2020 and started collecting the invested money after they promised huge returns.
“They promised 5 per cent returns on their investment every day for 60 days and also 10 per cent commission for referring new investors. Worried with huge investments, they shut the business within two months,” said Cyberabad commissioner VC Sajjanar.
Though the accused never had any office or physical space for running their firm and had run the business during the two months only using laptops, their business spread through words.
“All the victims were members of a WhatsApp group created by the assistant engineers and got to know about it from other members and fell in the trap,” said Sajjanar.
The fraud came to light after an assistant engineer working with the TSSPDCL lodged a complaint with the Cybercrime Wing of Cyberabad police. Police seized the documents pertaining to land measuring 387 Sq yards and vehicles and gadgets, all worth Rs 50 lakh from them.
Police said the complainant, an assistant engineer in TSSPDCL, saw an advertisement about STEMCOR MAX HEDGE app and website www.stemcormaxhedge.com in Google and contacted on the mobile numbers and got information about the app for online marketing where customer invests the amount and on his investment, the company will refund 5 percent of the money as commission every day up to 60 working days and if the customer joins any another customer he would get 10 commission on his investment.
He invested Rs 1.60 lakh with them and even received Rs 15,320 as a commission. When he failed to receive the amount later as promised, he tried to contact them through email and WhatsApp, but there was no response.
Inquiries revealed that the accused, all college dropouts, have earlier invested in online trading and MLM schemes. With the experience, they designed a website and a mobile app and started the business. To make people think that the firm is based in the UK, they mentioned a place in London as the address of the firm and a phone number of that country.
They also used pictures of unknown people as directors on the website and collected investments after conversion into British pounds and American dollars and also offered various investment plans to the clients.