New Delhi: A 41-year-old owner of multi-level marketing company was arrested here for allegedly duping over 11,000 people of Rs 20 crore by promising them land, police said on Wednesday.
Manish Goel was apprehended yesterday following investigations into allegations that Cosy Marketing Pvt Ltd cheated people by offering plots in Rajasthan`s Pushkar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (EoW) S D Mishra said.
Last year, the company organised many seminars in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP about a real estate project. The scheme launched mentioned that a member of the scheme could get a plot of 100 sq yard in Pushkar for Rs 41,000.
"For this plot, initially, a member had to deposit Rs 11,000 in advance at the time of obtaining membership of the scheme and remaining money was to be deposited against the membership of the plot in 15 instalments of Rs 2000 each per month.
"Till date more than 11,000 persons have invested in the scheme," Mishra said.
The company, which is into multi-level marketing, had collected money from public and distributed commission to existing member for adding a new member in the scheme.
The company had acquired some agricultural land near Pushkar and the photographs were shown to the investors to induce them to invest in the scheme, wrongly promising an upcoming township there.
"The company reportedly allotted plots to a few members but for most of the other members it did not fulfil its promise since the whole scheme, in fact, was a farce. The company had only a limited piece of land, that too agricultural, grossly insufficient to allot plots to the huge number of members they made.
"There were no sanctions of a township and the money generated from public was circulated to pay commissions and rewards to earlier members to lure more customers. The company, in this way, cheated the members of their invested money," Mishra said.
Two bank accounts - one in Kotak Mahindra Bank and the other in ICICI Bank at Dwarka - where the cheated money of the victims were transferred have been identified and frozen. Efforts are on to trace his brother Rakesh Goel, co-accused and alleged mastermind in this racket, Mishra said.
PTI
