It was a colleague who introduced Srikanth, an IT professional in Bengaluru, to the wealth management firm Vikram Investments. Srikanth invested Rs 25 lakh, his life savings, in the firm, expecting to get the handsome returns it promised. But now he might lose the whole money, as the police have registered a cheating case against Vikram Investments. Ragavendra Srinath, director of the firm, is in police custody and four other people associated with it, including former sports journalist Sutram Suresh, are in judicial custody. The police is also looking for Srinath's wife, Sunitha Acharya, who is said to have lured many high-profile medical practitioners in the city into investing in Vikram Investments.
“I started with an investment of Rs 6 lakh in Janurary 2016, and was told that I would get an assured annual return of Rs 2 lakh,” said Srikanth. “I got Rs 2 lakh, though delayed by a few months, in May 2017. Then I invested Rs 20 lakh. The company had promised higher returns on higher amounts. Since I was making all the payments though cheques, I did not suspect anything. Even the profit of Rs 2 lakh was transferred online into my account. However, now my money is stuck and I do not know how long will it take to recover it.”
The fraud, which is said to be of around Rs 400 crore, got attention when former Indian cricket captain Rahul Dravid filed a complaint at the Sadashivanagar police station that he was cheated of around Rs 4 crore by Vikram Investments. It is said that Dravid mentioned in his complaint that he made the investments at the behest of Sutram Suresh. There are reports that Suresh had lured other sports persons, including shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Prakash Padukone, also into investing in Vikram Investments.
P.R. Balaji, who owns an incense sticks manufacturing firm, was the first to file a police complaint against Vikram Investments. “I believed them as they had promised that they would invest my money in commodity trading and give me good returns. When I did not get the promised amount in return I began to put pressure on them to give me the returns. At that time I came to know that they did not have a licence to trade in commodities and they were fraud. They did not even audit their balance sheets,” said Balaji.
The police said more than 1,800 people had been cheated by Vikram Investments. “Our preliminary investigation has revealed that the accused were not trading in any commodity market but just shuffling investors' money,” said P.S. Puttana, the investigating officer.
“They were taking money from one investor and giving it as profit to another.” It has also been reported that the accused had been buying properties through benami transactions.