We covered different cases of Ponzi Schemes, however, most of those came into the picture after clients lost their hard-earned money.
But in one case involving Infinite Beacon, we conducted in-depth research after receiving numerous complaints from our subscribers.
Based on the facts and data, we found that the company is operating illegal and unregulated investment platforms, and has expanded its network across several cities in Maharashtra and Goa.
Here is what our research uncovered.
Is Infinite Beacon Running a Ponzi Scheme?
Infinite Beacon, a company based in Pune, operates a large network of investment scams, luring new investors by promising guaranteed returns.
In short, the company is running a massive Ponzi scheme across various cities in Maharashtra and Goa.
We were doing research on this along with many other complaints that we received and meanwhile, we just posted answers to one of the questions regarding Infinite Beacon services on Reddit in the month of March-April.
Honestly, we forgot that post, but those who engage in wrongdoing are always afraid of being exposed.
Driven by that same fear, Navanath Avatade, Director of Infinite Beacon, sent us a threatening email on May 31, 2024. The email claimed that they had filed a complaint against us with Cyber Crime in Pune and would soon lodge an FIR for the post we had made on Reddit.
He further threatened us with court cases, defamation suits, and various other allegations, some of which they may not have been fully aware of.
Additionally, they proposed a settlement, stating that they would drop the matter if we removed the post and did not publish anything against them in the future.
Now, this gives us even more confidence that the company was doing some kind of fraud.
We started our research and contacted their clients, and agents, and also became their client ourselves in their scheme to check the whole modus operandi.
What Did We Uncover?
In our investigation, which took almost 2 months, we succeeded in uncovering a few points:
- Infinite Beacon operates in association with a registered stockbroker Tradez and runs an investment scheme without any proper registration or license.
- The company has a vast network in Maharashtra, and Goa, and is expanding into North India.
- They lure people by promising guaranteed returns of 10% or more per month.
- Investors were asked to transfer funds directly to the company’s bank accounts, a major red flag.
- During our investigation, we attended several meetings and discovered that many of their clients were educated professionals who fell victim to greed.
Now to collect investors’ funds, they had opened multiple current bank accounts.
Now all, this was happening without any registration or license. We attended a few meetings conducted by their agents and found that most of their clients were educated professionals.
This disappointed us a lot that in greed of earning quick gains how people end up losing their hard-earned money.
To get more into this, we talked to one of the clients. He told us how their agent creates inducement and mis-influence people to add more and more money. To gain trust, they provide returns as well.
That client himself added a fund of ₹11,00,000/- in a few installments but found it suspicious and asked for their PnL to verify the details. But they denied it. On this, that client withdrew his capital right away.
Luckily he identified the red flag but many could not and realized that they had been scammed after losing their money.
Next, we impersonate an investor and get in touch with one of the agents.
He told us how the whole scheme works and also disclosed the name of the Mother Company, Tradez, which is a SEBI-registered stock broker.
This means by taking the name of the SEBI-registered entity they were trying to run this fraudulent scheme.
The agent then provided us with a meeting link, where we received more detailed information.
During the meeting, the agent stated that the Portfolio Management Services (PMS) for clients were executed through Tradez. Further he added that the investments were managed by Infinite Beacon.
Through their presentation, they demonstrates how their investors and traders team creates value from the same.
Finally, by showing high returns, they convince investors to add a minimum ₹3 lakh – ₹5 lakh.
Of that return, 50% would be provided to investors, and the rest 50% would be kept by the company.
We realized that this scam was much bigger than it seems to be.
How We Discover the Connection between Infinite Beacon & Tradez Stock Broking?
To find the connection between Infinite Beacon & Tradez, we file a complaint on SEBI SCORES & Smart ODR platforms. After 2-3 weeks, we received a reply from Tradez that they were not connected with Infinite Beacon.
But in the same reply, they mentioned that they were aware that Infinite Beacon had filed a complaint against us.
How?
This gave us a strong clue about the connection between the two firms. We then went to the MCA website where what we found, helped us in reaching a conclusion.
Three of the directors of both companies were common. Hence proved.
They Launched a Fake Website!
In the sequence of events, something very interesting happened.
Just two days after we filed a complaint on SMART ODR against Infinite Beacon a domain was created on June 16, 2024, with the name rizeamc.com and displayed it as a Singapore-based company
However, this domain was registered on January 25, 2024, but was updated on June 24, 2024.
Within 9 days, on June 25, 2024, the website was published on this domain. This means, that the website didn’t exist before that and this could be easily checked through web archive history.
To gain trust and make it look authentic, Infinite Beacon ran many PR articles on top-notch newspapers including Times Now, Business World, Ahmedabad Mirror, etc.
Not only this, they displayed it on their homepage where they mentioned: “Powered by RiseAMC”, the company which didn’t even exist a few months back.
In a way, the company adopted new ways to loot people’s money.
And One Day We Received a Legal Notice of ₹25 Lakh!
And one day, we received a legal notice of ₹25 lakh with a copy of the cyber report attached. They had even complained about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
But such legal notice couldn’t stop us from doing our work.
We invested ₹10,000 in the Infinite Beacon platform. Right from the beginning, the company itself gave so many red flags, which made us wonder why educated people investing in it didn’t see it.
It all started with KYC where Aadhar is the most important document, Right?
However, our KYC was completed without Aadhar verification. Even the bank proof we shared was incomplete.
Post that they provided us with the bank account details where the agent asked us to transfer money. As soon as we transferred the fund, we got a login to the dashboard of Infinite Beacon where we could see our investment amount.
After about a week the invested amount became around ₹10,351.34, which meant we received a 3.5% return on our investment.
Hence it was proved that the company through its illegal investment platform was running a Ponzi Scheme.
And yes, just to make clear, that invested and return amount was not in our bank account but was still in the company’s account. Further, there were a few TnCs applied on withdrawal as well.
What’s the End of Such Schemes?
Now these schemes run till the mastermind makes enough money to flee away or some kind of news comes out regarding their scams. This led to building trust issues among new investors, which made it difficult for the company to provide returns to existing investors.
Eventually, they were left with no other choice but to run away with the capital of investors.
Investors who invested their capital but not using their bank accounts but by transferring it to the scammers’ account. Hence no way to get it back.
In simple terms, such unregistered entities never invest investors’ funds. Instead, the fund keeps on circulating among new investors and the chain continues till the date the company stops operating.
It is therefore important for people to understand and be more aware before putting their capital in such schemes.
