Scams in the name of investment are not taking any pause affecting people both financially & mentally. Sometimes the scammer succeeds in gaining so much trust, that even after getting hints & red-flag, the victim believes his word and follows him blindly.
Something similar happened with Yuvraj (name changed). Yuvraj joined stock market classes to learn trading and ended up losing ₹25,00,000 in an investment scam. The worst part of his story is he’s still in the hope that the scammer would return his capital.
Following is the complete narration of how the scammer won in meeting his objective.
This all started in the month of June, when Yuvraj while searching for a stock market course, came across Alpha Stock Trading Classes (name changed). He joined the classes with the hope of learning to trade.
Soon after he joined, his so-called mentor Ajay (name changed) started providing them tips to do LIVE trading. Luckily, the tips worked too, leaving no room for doubt for Yuvraj.
After gaining the trust of his students, Ajay came up with an investment plan where he gave an assurance of a 4-5% return per month. He said that by collecting funds from his students he would invest it in the high return stocks and will provide regular returns.
His students including Yuvraj who trusted him, followed him and deposited the respective amount to his bank account. Yuvraj alone deposited a fund of ₹25,00,000.
A few days later, when it was time to provide returns, he informed his students, including Yuvraj, that he had received a notice from SEBI for promising high returns on investments. As a result, the amount he had invested was temporarily blocked. He assured them that once everything was resolved, he would return their capital.
When Yuvraj visited his office, he showed the notice highlighting the same reason he talked about. Later when Yuvraj asked for a copy of the same, he denied it and said that it could impact his brand image.
He gave an assurance that it was for the short term and soon he would refund all the amount. For further assurance, he said that he had invested in one real-estate project in Mumbai, and if in the next 3 months he failed to refund the amount then would allocate that part ofthe property proportionally among investors.
Unlike other scammers, he has not blocked anyone and it is the only part of his scam. Because he knew that as soon as he blocked people, one or the other would file a complaint and then there could be a chance that he got caught.
Further, to calm investors he gave them false assurance of providing part of the property.
We came across a similar case where Neumec Estate Developer LLP committed an investment fraud of ₹35 lakh with a lady promising 12% return per annum and at the same time looted ₹90 L from a doctor by giving false promises of delivering a flat
Yuvraj, who approached our team for advice is still not able to make a decision of whether to file a complaint or wait for a next few months, not realizing that those few months period is not for him but for the scammer who might be gathering fund from other investors like him to fled away with huge capital.
However, our team suggested Yuvraj to take immediate action against him and file a complaint in SEBI.
Since he is not a registered advisor hence the only way to report this scam is to send an email to a registered SEBI email. In such cases, one must not delay reporting as it reduces the chances and sometimes takes years to recover the lost amount.
In this case, Yuvraj and other people need to understand that Ajay started all this only to loot their money. He had no intention of providing training or any returns on their investment. So, before it is too late, they must go ahead with the filing and further proceedings of this case.
