Hyderabad firm dupes 184 in Mumbai of Rs 45 cr, MD among 20 booked

Police have booked Capital Protection Force Private Limited, its managing director Amardeep Singh, directors Anita Kumari, Pawan Odela and other executives and staff of the company.

They have been booked based on the complaint of Smita Niraj Dubey, 37, a businesswoman from Andheri who got to know about the “investment scheme” through mouth publicity.

As per Dubey’s complaint, the accused company and its top management and functionaries floated a scheme called Falcon Invoice Discounting and induced people to invest money into it.

They promised investors returns by an interest rate ranging from 12-18% and accepted deposits from them via payment gateway, Dubey states in the FIR.

The accused company initially gave timely returns to the depositors encouraging them to invest more and also bring in more investors. They also ran a M-L-M (Multi Level Marketing) model business, Dubey said.

As per the FIR, the accused company and its operators did not return money and the promised returns to the depositors in stipulated time and later ran away after closing the company.

The company defrauded 184 people from Mumbai to the tune of Rs 45.41 crore between July 2024 to January 2025, police said.

To lure investors, the accused firm claimed that it is providing invoice discounting services to reputed firms. The website they have created was later turned out to be bogus one, Dubey claimed.

The complainant came in contact with other victims of the accused company who have formed a WhatsApp group which has 1,025 members, the FIR stated.

“The bank authorities were sleeping or they were hand in glove with the accused as they did not raise objection or flag it after seeing daily transactions of around Rs 5 crore in the account of an housekeeping service providing agency providing maids and security guards,” the complainant said.

The EOW have booked the accused company operators under sections 316(2), 318(4), 61(2) of the Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS) and 3 and 4 of Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) Act.

The Hyderabad police have already registered three fraud cases against the company and its top functionaries and arrested three people in the case. The prime accused and a few others are suspected to have fled to Dubai, said an EOW source.