Varanasi: The Sarnath police busted a pyramid scheme racket in Sarnath on Tuesday, arresting seven members of a gang accused of duping hundreds of youths of lakhs of rupees through a fake Multi-Level Marketing operation. For months, over 250 victims had been turning up at the gang’s office, operating as a call centre front, to recover their money before police finally acted.Acting on multiple complaints, DCP Varuna Pramod Kumar directed ACP Sarnath Vidush Saxena and Sarnath SHO Pankaj Tripathi to raid the premises.During the raid, ACP Saxena found a large crowd of youths surrounding the office. Police detained seven individuals who were allegedly running the MLM operation disguised as a call centre and began interrogating them.The investigation revealed that unemployed youths were lured with promises of jobs and made to pay Rs 30,000 under a pyramid scheme. Victims were then asked to attend training sessions and persuaded to recruit their family members and others into the network.Several youths had even brought their family members into the scheme, from whom money was also collected. The accused promised higher commissions for recruiting more people, despite there being no fixed salary structure or actual product involved, exposing it as a blatant pyramid scheme scam.Police found more than 250 young men from districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar gathered at the site, many of them visibly distressed. Officers said the victims appeared psychologically trapped, having already lost their money to the fraudsters.Police arrested seven operators of the company after evidence confirmed that they had been running the fraudulent operation for the past two months. Several mobile phones, documents, registers and electronic devices were also seized during the raid and are currently under examination. Further investigation is underway, ACP Saxena said.
