Ahmedabad: Sarkhej police have registered two cheating complaints against a man from Shela, who has been accused of luring investors into share market schemes with promises of high monthly returns and allegedly defrauding them of Rs 42 lakh.One complaint was filed by a 46-year-old woman from Paldi, and the other by a 76-year-old woman from Satellite. According to police, the Paldi woman, who works at a private company, said the accused first contacted her family in Nov 2021 after her husband received a call from a person claiming to represent a wealth management firm offering attractive share market investment policies with high returns. She and her husband later visited the firm’s office on SG Highway, where they met the accused, who allegedly introduced himself as the owner and offered a scheme promising 10 per cent monthly returns on investment. Believing the offer, the woman invested Rs 10 lakh in the name of her 11-year-old son, with herself as guardian. The money was paid through two cheques in Nov 2021, and a notarised memorandum of understanding was signed in Dec 2021. Police said the accused initially paid returns to gain the family’s trust. The complainant received four payments totalling Rs 2.69 lakh in the first few months, after which the payments stopped. When the family sought either the promised returns or repayment of the principal, the accused allegedly kept delaying them. In Feb 2023, he asked them to return the original MoU, saying the principal would be repaid within 30 days. The complainant alleged that after taking the document back, he neither returned the money nor remained available at his office or residence. In the second complaint, a 76-year-old Satellite resident alleged that the same man promised 3 per cent monthly returns through a share market scheme and took Rs 8.5 lakh from her in 2022. Police said she received returns for 10 months, but the principal amount was never repaid. Investigators said four others were similarly cheated. The complaint also stated that the woman later learned that several other investors had allegedly been duped in a similar manner, with the total amount involved in her case and those of other victims amounting to Rs 42 lakh.
