Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing, Odisha, on Tuesday arrested managing director (MD) of Way to Add India Pvt Ltd on charges of cheating investors of Rs 50 crore. The arrested has been identified as Mohan Kumar Parida of Kandagardi in Bhadrak. He was nabbed from Chandbali.
According to a EOW release, the case was registered on the written complaint by one Chita Ranjan Palo of Kalinga Nagar, Bhubaneswar, against the company and its MD, who holds an MBA degree, and others for inducing him and many other investors with high returns of 26% interest per month for 3 months on the invested amount under different schemes – autopool package, boosting package. They were also promised bonus of 2% for enrolling new members.
“An investor was required to join the schemes by depositing Rs 2,500 which is non-refundable. Following this, he was given a login ID under which he could enrol 3 more persons for commission/bonus. Initially, he was being given the Ayurvedic products of Rs 500 which was subsequently stopped. To win their confidence, some initial returns were also made. The MD, however, abruptly closed the schemes, the company office and fled after collecting Rs 50 crore from 2000 investors in Odisha,” the EOW investigation revealed.
In 2023, Polo deposited deposited Rs 44.60 lakh and initially got the return of Rs 12,600. “Thereafter, no amount was paid to him,” the release added.
Way to Add India (P) Ltd was registered with ROC, Cuttack, in 2020, having its registered office at Prachi Vihar, Palasuni, Rasulgarh. “The company was actually running a Ponzi scheme in a pyramid-binary structure. The company was not authorised to accept any public deposit either by RBI or SEBI. It was also not issuing any money receipt rather asking the investors to deposit the invested amount in its accounts. The initial returns were made from the investment of the new members,” it further said.
The collected money were diverted to several other accounts, it added. The EOW has also seized a laptop and it contains several incriminating materials like list of investors, the amount invested, payment sheet.