Mumbai: City’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), probing a Rs 17 crore investment fraud case, recently arrested three accused, including a woman from Hyderabad. The complainants told police that a total of 233 investors lost Rs 54 crore in this case. The accused were earlier arrested by the Cyberabad police in a Rs 850 crore investment fraud case.The EOW booked 18 individuals and two companies, Capital Protection Force Pvt Ltd and Shreehari Penimo Company, both based in Hyderabad. The EOW issued lookout circular notices against five accused.Those arrested were Pavan Kumar Odela (40), vice president of Capital Protection Force Pvt Ltd and business head of Falcon Invoice, Kavya Nalluri (30), additional director of Capital Protection and Falcon Capital Ventures Pvt Ltd, and Yogendra Singh, an employee of Falcon Capital Venture Pvt Ltd. All of them were sent to police custody till June 13. As per earlier reports, Singh was said to be the CEO of Falcon Capital Ventures.The accused were taken into custody from a Hyderabad jail. They are accused of luring depositors with promises of high returns on short-term deposits under the guise of invoice discounting. The accused assured investors of 12-18% returns on the investments for a period ranging from 20 days to 180 days. It is similar to a loan where companies involved in invoice discounting lend money up to a certain percentage of the value of the invoices. Once a customer clears the invoices, the loan can be repaid.An Andheri resident, who lost Rs 50 lakh, lodged the FIR. EOW has frozen 14 bank accounts in this case. Police said the office bearers of the Capital Force company ran the Falcon Invoice discounting App.The accused collected deposits through this app. Investors could see their investment and profit in the app. The companies had no office in Mumbai or any other part of Maharashtra, said police. A team supervised by joint CP EOW Nishith Mishra, led by DCP Sangramsinh Nishandar, and inspector Maruti Sangle, is probing the case.
