A ‘fake taxi app’ scam was reportedly busted by a team of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police after they were successful at arresting one woman – reportedly learned to be the mastermind of the entire scam.
The 47-year old woman was arrested from a resort in South Goa after she duped nearly over 900 people. She had promised them vast returns on their investments in her app-based taxi services. The entire case involves nearly Rs 250 crores.
Her app-based taxi service, named as ‘Hello Taxi’, involved her other business partners also, and they all promised investors returns of nearly 200% on a monthly basis.
“During our investigations, it was found that the directors of the company actively induced the victims to part with their money on the pretext of high returns in Hello Taxi company,” joint commissioner EOW O.P Misra said.
The company co-directors initially paid their investors their returns, however, after collecting the large sum of money, they fled and closed all sorts of communications with their investors. This occurred last year, and subsequently, a complaint was launched in 2019.
After the directors shut their office in Ghaziabad, the accused kept changing their locations. The police immediately sealed their bank accounts, and assets, in the form of 62 cars were also confiscated by the investigating team.
After one co-director was arrested in August, information on the whereabouts of the others was received, and following a tip-off, the woman, part of the board of directors of the company, was arrested from a South Goa resort.
The company had four co-directors, one of them being the woman arrested from Goa.
