Bengaluru based company duped Rahul Dravid for crores
The firm took investment from some other major sports stars and turned out to be a fraud.
Rahul Dravid, Saina Nehwal and Prakash Padukone have a few things in common. They are recognized world over for their excellent sporting careers are extremely popular among the fans and were duped by the same Ponzi firm in Bengaluru. It is not just them but as per reports the company got in other big names from various industries to invest in as well and turned out to be fraud.
As per the information provided by the Bengaluru City Police Dravid, Saina and former Indian Badminton legend Padukone invested in Vikram Investment Company. The firm was particularly targeting the popular faces from sports, cinema, art and politics and the initial reports suggest that the money they raised was somewhere around 300 crores.
News 18 reported that the police arrested the owner of the company Raghavendra Sreenath and some of their agents by the name Sutram Suresh, Narasimhamurthy, K C Nagaraj and Prahlad. They were presented in court and have been sent to a 14-day police custody.
Among them, Suresh is a popular sports journalist from Bengaluru and he was the one who got the sports personalities to invest in their Ponzi company. The investors were all promised a 40% return on investment whereas in reality haven’t even been returned their initial investment.
Sent to police custody
“They have been sent to police custody for 14 days. The gang has duped the investors of over Rs 300 crores. We are verifying the documents,” a police officer was quoted as saying by News 18.
The cops have managed to extract from those arrested the names of all the investors along with their bank account details and are currently verifying the same.
The owner of the company Raghavendra is said to be the mastermind in this case and is an engineer by profession. He was the one who started Vikram Investment Company with an office in Yeshwantpur. To reach out to investors he roped in others as agents and had promised them a hefty sum for the services.
All the three Dravid, Saina as well as Padukone haven’t given their account in the case but are expected to divulge the details as the investigation moves forward.
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