Kanpur:
The Kanpur Police on Monday claimed to have busted an inter-state multi-level marketing (MLM) racket that allegedly duped more than 60,000 people of nearly Rs 100 crore with fake job offers and selling unregistered Ayurvedic products.
The police have also arrested six people.
A joint team of the Cyber Cell, Crime Branch and Hanumant Vihar police arrested six alleged members of the syndicate during a raid at Mangalam garden on Arra Road in Barra, police said.
The accused have been identified as Ravindra Yadav, Kamlesh Kumar and Mantosh Paswan, all from Bihar; Rohit Shaw from West Bengal; Mangal Shakya from Madhya Pradesh; and Raju Kumar from Deoria in Uttar Pradesh.
However, the alleged kingpins, including the company’s two managing directors, are still absconding.
Raghubir Lal, Commissioner of Police, told PTI that the accused operated under the names Win Maker Ayurveda and Win Maker Wellness Pvt Ltd, targeting unemployed youth in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and several other states with promises of well-paying jobs and quick financial success.
“The job seekers were invited to seminars at hotels and offered salaries of Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 a month. Instead, they were persuaded to buy unregistered Ayurvedic medicine kits and pay Rs 12,000 to Rs 30,000 to join the network,” Lal added.
According to the police, recruits were then trained to enrol more people, creating a pyramid chain. To lend credibility to the scheme, the organisers allegedly staged promotional events featuring fake success stories, award ceremonies and promises of motorcycles and rapid promotions.
Around 2,000 people in Kanpur alone had fallen victim to the fraud, while more than 60 thousand people across several states were cheated, Lal told PTI.
Additional DCP (Operations) Sumit Sudhakar Ramteke said the company was registered in Noida and Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar and had been operating since 2021. The alleged masterminds, Inamul Haq and Vijay Kushwaha, both from Bihar, are on the run, he added.
Ramteke said another key accused, Manish Sinha, had been arrested in a similar fraud case registered in Muzaffarpur in 2024.
The police said the racket had set up five centres in UP, including Kanpur, Jhansi, Gorakhpur and Basti, besides several others in Bihar and other states, where recruits were trained to expand the network.
Six Android mobile phones, digital records, WhatsApp chats, audio clips and other electronic evidence were seized during the operation. Investigators are analysing the material to identify more victims and trace the money trail.
A case has been registered under the relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act.
Efforts are underway to freeze the accused’s bank accounts and arrest the remaining members of the syndicate, the police said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
