JOIN USCon couple's posh lifestyle fooled investors
Investor meets at plush hotels attended by Bollywood singers, luxury sedans, fluent English and impressive personality were the selling points of Ullas Prabhakar Khaire and his wife Raksha Urs, who amassed crores by duping investors.
The police have seized 12 vehicles, including a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Mercedes, from the couple, registered under different names in RTOs across the country.
The couple owned 94 bank accounts in over 20 banks. So far, the police have traced about Rs 63 crore - demand drafts of Rs 26.86 crore, fixed deposits of Rs 80 lakh, share investments of Rs 5.87 crore, Rs 23.70 crore in cash and property worth over Rs 5.87 crore.
Besides, the police have identified 12 properties including eight flats in Dwaraka, Delhi, one flat each at Bhiwadi and Alwar in Rajasthan, Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh and one villa in Goa. “Both of them are experts in disguise so much so that their various photographs also look startlingly different. They are also very fond of gadgets and possess many laptops, notebooks, premium watches, iphones, touch phones and ipads,” said Sandeep Goel, Joint Commissioner of Police, Economic Offences Wing, Delhi police.
“They enticed the public by organising conferences at five-star hotels and distributed very attractive brochures. Besides, they had hired agents across the country, who mobilised funds on their behalf,” he said. After their arrest on Saturday, the couple were produced before a court in Ratnagiri before being brought to Delhi, where they will be in police custody for 10 days.
Incidentally, none of the firms launched by the couple have been registered or authorised by the government or SEBI.
The couple used FaceBook and SMSes to attract investors with promises of manifold returns. They claimed that their main company, Stock Guru India, was a ten-year-old ISO certified public limited firm.
Though Khaire had a certificate in the name of Lokeshwar, it was found that it belongs to one of the aspirants in Dehradun, who had submitted his documents to a fraud institute launched by the con couple. The couple’s grand lifestyle lured thousands of middle-class investors. They were also seen moving with half-a-dozen bouncers, who rarely allowed anybody to talk to them directly.
Khaire, who did a certificate course in stock investment, always sported costly watches and used high-end mobile phones. The couple also went to Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand and were raided by the Income Tax department in January 2011. Around Rs 30 crore was seized then. “He had a hobby of collecting toy pistols. Besides, he used SIM cards and phones only once that made it tough to track him,” a police official said.