Gandhinagar: A day after the reports of arrest of the mastermind of over Rs 200 crore online ad/investment scam of Gujarat, Vinay Shah in Nepal, the CID-crime investigating the scam today interrogated one of his close aide Dipak Jha even as several of the victims of the fraud made a bee-line of sorts in the office of the investigating agency here to file complaint in the hope to getting their lost money back.

A CID-crime official said that Jha was interrogated in the case.

He also said that complaints of several of the victims who had invested in the ponzi scheme were also recorded. One of them an auto-driver said that he had invested money in the scheme despite the warning of his father. He said that he had broken the fixed deposits of his father to make the investment.

‘It was hard earned money and now I want it back. We have been told that the CID-crime can recover it from Shah and return us,’ he added.

Notably, the Nepal police and Income tax/revenue intelligence department of the neighbouring country had arrested Shah with foreign currency worth around Rs 30 lakh on Saturday. He would be brought to India under the procedure of extradition treaty.

Shah was nabbed by the local authorities of Nepal as they become suspicious of him due to his extravagant spending in bars and other such places in Pokhara, one of the main tourist spots in Nepal. He had also reportedly fallen for a local Nepali girl. His alleged wasteful spending had attract the eyes of the locals which in turn brought him to the notice of the authorities leading to his arrest.

Gujarat government had handed over the probe of the sensational ponzi scheme to the state crime on November 14.

Notably, the CID crime was also competent under the Gujarat Protection of Interest of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act, 2003, to recover the scam money from the assets of the accused to compensate it to the victims. An SIT has been constituted for the probe of the scam which as per an estimate has affected thousands of investors.

Shah in a letter earlier had alleged several police officials and others of being the beneficiary of his scam.

Shah had opened an office in Thaltej area of Ahmedabad and allegedly duped numerous people by making them invest in his scheme which claimed to double or more than double different fixed sums collected in the name of running advertisements on two websites created by his company. It also used to give username and password to those who pay a certain amount and claimed to pay also for seeing the advertisement a certain number of times.

Shah had also made several investors go for sponsored foreign trips.

Allegations were leveled that he had nexus with police and politicians.

CID crime had earlier recovered cash and other items worth over Rs 50 lakh from the residence and offices of Shah here. Apart from cash, over 30 computers, 2 laptops, gold and silver jewelry, 4 swipe machines and other articles and documents were seized. Some of the documents were reportedly pertaining to investment in stock markets.

The four cases lodged against Shah and others in the scam in Ahmedabad have already been take over for investigation by the CID-crime.

DeshGujarat