The arrest of ‘Ponzi’ operator Imtiaz Saiyed by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch has now brought his old company Waves Investment Ltd under the scanner.

The arrest of ‘Ponzi’ operator Imtiaz Saiyed by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch has now brought his old company Waves Investment Ltd under the scanner.
It was after complaints against one Abhay Gandhi, an alleged Ponzi scheme operator, that investors duped in similar fashion approached the police and Saiyed was among those arrested in the crackdown.

The police have said that Saiyed is an old Ponzi master from Ahmedabad and has been running his operations from the Juhapura area for over 10 years now.

Waves Investment, the police said, has over 50,000 investors across Gujarat, especially in Ahmedabad, Anand, Kheda, Himmatnagar, Godhra and Vadodara.

According to the police, Saiyed started the company with barely 10 to 20 investors from his own local community in his neighbourhood and then expanded his market among the per-dominant share dealers in the Satellite, Vastrapur and Navrangpura areas, making over Rs 100 crore in profits each year.

Investigations have revealed that Saiyed’s fraud was not limited to inviting share investments, but involved opening bank accounts with two major private banks in respective cities. Saiyed had appointed several agents to build a customer network for him and his agents, with help from the bank agents, opened trading accounts in private banks and the dealings with the customers were done on fake stamp papers. Besides the bank accounts, there was no other proof of investments, the police said.

Ahmed Pathan, an agent of Saiyed (now on the run) told this paper: “The company floated three different schemes for the share dealers - 10 per cent trading scheme with trading accounts; a bank deposit scheme with double money in return; and share market scheme at 10 per cent. The money was shifted from one person’s bank account to another to show that it a double return on deposits. The 10 per cent trading scheme was the most popular in Ahmedabad where investors received 10 per cent ‘return’ every month. His experience as a bank employee helped him dupe investors with the trade account schemes.”

The police said Saiyed launched his ‘Ponzi’ business after the reported success of Zahir Rana of Ahmedabad (now in custody). Rana was the first one to bring the ‘Ponzi’ schemes in the city, duping investors to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore.

The police said Saiyed could successfully remain out of the police net due to his past record as an employee of a nationalised bank. He was earlier arrested for swindling Rs 3 crore from the SBI, but was later bailed out.

Hussain Qadri, one of the several investors duped by Saiyed, said: “I had invested Rs 50, 000 in the 10 per cent trading scheme where I would get Rs 5,000 every month. He claimed that the deposit was being tripled and after an year, he will give Rs 3 lakh”.

Another investor, Kalim Saiyyed, who paid Rs 1 lakh to the company in 2005, said he was told he had earned Rs 20 lakh. 4th complaint filed against Abhay Gandhi

The Ahmedabad Crime Branch has registered a fourth complaint against fraudster Abhay Gandhi. Five persons have accused him of duping them of Rs 1.80 lakh in fraudulent investment schemes. The police have also seized a Toyota car belonging to Abhay, worth Rs 20 lakh, from a car dealer. The accused had reportedly left his car for sale at the dealer’s store.

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