The Hindu : New Delhi News : Three held for cheating through the Net

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Three held for cheating through the Net

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 14. A racket involving hefty commission in lieu of getting more candidates enrolled through direct agents in a fraudulent website venture and duping people of their money has been busted by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police. Three persons have been arrested in this connection and brochures, pamphlets, application forms, blank cheques, payment receipts and two computers have been recovered from their possession.

According to the police, the EOW got a complaint about some people running a fraud enterprise on the Internet and duping several people of their money since 2001. Following investigations, the police arrested Uma Shankar Bhardwaj (29), Kishore Ray (26) and Akhilesh Mani Tripathi (24).

The police said Uma Shankar had floated a company by the name of M/S Bhasee Infotech Solutions and later got it registered as a private limited company. Akhilesh and Kishore used to act as the direct selling agents of the company and were designated as "Silver ID" and "Master ID". They used to induce people by promising to enrolling their names into huge databases, categorised profession wise, which would help them enhance their career in future.

In order to execute the alleged racket, the accused floated a website, indya2net.com. Any one registering with the website was given access to five different websites -- i2nmatrimonials.com, i2nfashiondesign.com, i2ndoctors.com and others -- which were supposed to be databases for doctors, fashion designers and others. Any person registering with the site at a price of Rs. 13,500 -- later increased to Rs. 14,580 -- was given a cheque for Rs. 80 per day, duly signed by Uma Shankar. The precondition was to find more customers to enrol into the network and earn commission in return. Initially, in order to gain confidence, the accused used to send cheques to new customers and also give commission to the agents.

However, the company did not provide anything concrete to the customers in the name of career enhancement. Nevertheless, they did hold four seminars, two in Hotel Centaur and two in Hotel Parkroyal.

The prerequisite for such a venture was constant fresh recruitment. But Akhilesh and Kishore lost control of the chain and fund collection dropped. The cheques began to bounce. Finally, the company went bust and the office at Janakpuri district centre was closed. The trio then went underground. Later, however, they surfaced with a new company Aspirant Infotech Services Private Limited at Pitampura but were arrested.

Interrogation of the accused revealed that they used to target "clients" mostly from Bihar. Kishore and Akhilesh, who hail from Bihar, had come to Delhi for higher studies but were enticed by Uma Shankar into the racket.

Uma Shankar, a Delhi University graduate, had completed a diploma course in web designing and the racket was his brainchild. The accused consciously avoided any "client" from Delhi.

The police said all of them had earned lakhs in commission and had managed to collect Rs. 6 crores through the fraudulent deals. They had also managed to dupe more than 5,000 people. Further investigations in the case are on.

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