Two arrested in Hyderabad for duping investors in Rs 850-cr Ponzi scheme

Management of Falcon Invoice Discounting platform introduced itself as a peer-to-peer web platform and promised investors high returns on their investment

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad Police arrested two people — Pavan Kumar Odela, vice-president, and Kavya Nalluri, director — working with Capital Protection Force Private Limited and business head of Falcon Invoice Discounting Platform for cheating thousands of investors to the tune of Rs 850 crore.

According to the police, the management of Falcon Invoice Discounting (FID) platform introduced itself as a P2P (peer-to-peer) web platform and promised investors high returns on their investment.

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“Pavan and Kavya, along with Amardeep Kumar, managing director; and Aryan Singh, chief operating officer; and others lured depositors by promising high returns on short term deposits under the guise of invoice discounting. A total amount of Rs 1,700 crore was collected and the amount repaid was Rs 850 crore. The remaining amount was swindled. A total 6,979 depositors were duped,” K Prasad, DCP (EOW) Cyberabad, said.

The company used a mobile application and website, and falsely presented itself as legitimate P2P invoice discounting service. “They claimed to connect depositors with reputed companies such as Britannia, Amazon and Godrej, while in reality they fabricated vendor profiles and fake deals to create an illusion of authenticity,” said the official.

The company promised returns between 11 per cent and 22 per cent per annum and collected deposits ranging from Rs 25,000-9 lakh with maturity period between 45 and 180 days.

The money collected from the investors was misappropriated and used to acquire and establish multiple companies. “We are actively investigating the case. Teams are working to trace and recover the misappropriated funds and identify additional individuals involved in the fraud,” said the DCP (EOW).

The suspects had previously deceived public with a multi-level marketing scheme through a company, ‘Blulife International Company’. A case was registered at the Chevella police station in 2022.