Bhubaneswar: Hundreds of people, including prominent personalities, have fallen victim to the false promises of the fraudsters in Odisha’s Nayagarh district, thereby losing crores of rupees.
According to reports, two local siblings floated an application named APM Terminals and promised depositors to multiply their investments in a short period. If a person deposited Rs 5,000, he would receive Rs 55,000, while a deposit of Rs 15 would fetch the investors Rs 1 lakh every month, the promoters of the app promised. Lured by this, hundreds of people deposited several crore rupees and lost everything when the app was disabled recently.
Many people deposited money through the app believing it to be genuine as it was promoted by two local siblings. However, according to a modest estimate fake app ‘APM Terminal’ has robbed them of more than Rs 5 crore.
What is shocking is that even prominent political leaders, lawyers, and police officials are among the depositors who have been cheated by the fraudsters.
The matter came to light after a depositor lodged a complaint with Nayagarh police in this regard on Thursday after the app was withdrawn. Based on the complaint, police registered a case and launched a probe into the allegation.
Following a preliminary probe, police detained two persons identified as Arun Dash and Amulya Dash, both residents of Gayatri Colony in Nayagarh.
Talking to media persons, Snehasis Sahu, Nayagarh SDPO, said, “After we received the complaint from one Chiranjibi Pradhan, we launched a probe and detained two persons in this connection. We are probing into the matter and preliminary reports suggest that it is a fake app used by scamsters to lure people to deposit money on the false promise of doubling their money. He added, “We suspect this fraud is not only limited to Nayagarh and is being carried out in other parts of the state.”
