Bike bot ponzi scam accused arrested in Lko

LUCKNOW: The UP Special Task Force (STF) arrested the owner of an electronic news channel, Badri Narain Tewari, in Lucknow on Thursday in connection with multi-crore bike bot ponzi scam. The accused was wanted in one of the cases registered at Dadri police station in Gautam Buddh Nagar, said STF officials.

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had been investigating the scam since March 2020 and sought the STF’s help in September 2020 for arresting people involved in it.

Badri Narain Tewari, a resident of Lucknow’s Alamnagar area, is the owner of a private news channel operated from Lucknow. He was arrested from Manoj Pandey crossing in Gomti Nagar while he was trying to move out of the city, said an STF official.

STF officials said Tewari was closely associated with Vijendra Singh Hooda, owner of Garvit Innovative Private Limited, which floated a ponzi scheme and allegedly duped over 2.5 lakh gullible investors of over ₹4,200 crore. He said Tewari got associated with Hooda as he was earlier involved in manufacturing battery-operated motorcycles and supplied these bikes to Garvit promoters.

An EOW official said the ponzi scheme operators allegedly duped people in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana by offering them a lucrative scheme of investing ₹62,200, the cost of one bike, and get returns of ₹9,765 every month for one year amounting to a total of over ₹1.17 lakh.

Investigation found the involvement of Tewari, who also made people invest in the ponzi scheme after getting associated with Hooda. Tewari amassed huge wealth by making gullible investors put money in the ponzi scheme, he said.