Luckow: A team of Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh police on Saturday arrested woman mastermind Neelam Verma from Manak Nagar who had allegedly duped 2,500 people of Rs 100 crore through ponzi-like schemes. She was carrying a cash reward of Rs 25,000 on her head.
The STF had information about an organised gang cheating people of billions of rupees through the lucrative schemes. Acting on a tip-off about the presence of the accused in Manak Nagar, the STF team conducted a raid and arrested her.
Quoting accused Neelam Verma, ASP, STF Vishal Vikram said in 2013, one Abhay Kushwaha had set up a company dealing with real estate. The company managed to convince gullible people to deposit money in instalments on the pretext of giving plots at cheap rates. The members of the company were Rajesh Pandey, Nikhil Kushwaha, Azam Siddiqui and Shakeel Ahmed Khan while Neelam was the director.
Later, the miscreants formed another company in 2017, in which Neelam, Abhay Kushwaha, Rajesh Pandey, Nikhil Kushwaha, Azam Siddiqui and Shakeel Ahmed Khan were the directors. This company doubled the money in a short time by floating Ponzi-like schemes, said the STF.
Seven separate teams were formed by the company to deposit money in the company. The company took help of 150 people in these teams, in which each team was headed by one main member known as ‘president’, who used to deposit money through his teams, for which he was given about 15 per cent commission, said STF.
“In this company, Neelam used to do the work of making agreements with the customers. When about Rs 100 crore was deposited in the two companies, they stopped paying the customers, following which a customer registered a case at Vibhuti Khand police station. Hundreds of cases have been registered against the company since 2019, in Fatehpur, Noida (UP), Muzaffarpur (Bihar), Mohali, Pathankot, Zirakpur (Punjab), Madhya Pradesh,” said ASP Singh.
