Two nabbed by Cyberabad EOW in Rs. 850 cr ponzi scheme case

Hyderabad: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Sunday arrested two persons in connection with a massive Rs. 850 crore Ponzi scheme linked to the Falcon Invoice Discounting platform.

The accused allegedly lured investors by promising high returns and duped them into making deposits. They have been identified as Pavan Kumar Odela, Vice President of Capital Protection Force Private Limited and Business Head of Falcon Invoice Discounting Platform and Kavya Nalluri, Director of Capital Protection Force Private Limited and Falcon Capital Ventures Private Limited. The arrested duo has been booked under Sections 316(2), 318(4), and 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act.

Falcon Invoice Discounting (FID) is a P2P (peer-to-peer) web platform, which promised 24 percent returns to the people on their investments by converting unpaid invoices of established companies into cash advances. Several investors are learnt to have invested more than Rs 1 crore over the past 2-3 years.

Hundreds of investors from various states got the shock of their lives when the investing platform suddenly ceased their operations and closed their office in Hyderabad's Hi-Tec City. A few panic-stricken investors visited the office after the company delayed their payments, prompting it to ask their employees to work from home and eventually shut down its office.The company had also opened their offices in Dubai and Austin in the United States.

Following complaints from dozens of investors, the Cyberabad police filed three criminal cases against the company's management, led by its chairman Amardeep Kumar. Amardeep, Yogender Singh, Aryan Singh, Anitha Kumar and others have been charged with breach of trust and cheating.

Amardeep Kumar’s Falcon Invoice Discounting Platform and its associated entities are estimated to have collected around Rs. 850 crores from investors. Nearly 7,000 depositors have been affected by the large-scale financial fraud.

According to a Bengaluru-based investor, many of them ignored the fact that they were depositing their money with Falcon, however, purchaser services agreements being sent by the invoice discounting platform were on the Falcon letterhead and signed by Amardeep but in the name of another company — Capital Protection Force Pvt Ltd.

The investors would make the payment via the app, all the transactions showed the payments going to Falcon Worldline Mumbai and for the long-term deals the payments were made to the ICICI Bank account of Capital Protection Force Pvt Ltd. But when Falcon used to pay the money back, it used to come from Capital Protection Force accounts.