Ponzi scamster gets 7 years in jail

The court of the chief metropolitan magistrate convicted one of the directors of a company for duping thousands of people through his Ponzi scheme, and sentenced him to seven years simple imprisonment.

Santosh Dabholkar, a director of Venus Life Marketing India Ltd, started operations on October 6, 2002. He had opened offices in many districts of the state, including Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Palanpur and Kutch. Dabholkar offered investors 11% interest on the purchase of preference share of his company.

He had further promised investors that their money would be returned in two years. However, when the time came to return the money, he said that his company had invested the money in the share market for profit and, hence, he would be able to return the money by next year.

But he closed his operations across the state before that so as to avoid having to pay his investors. He cheated people in Ahmedabad itself of Rs3 crore. Investors in Vadodara were duped of Rs1.25 crore and Palanpur residents lost Rs85 lakh. Investors who had lost their money filed a number of complaints against him. The case was handed over to the state CID for further investigation. After investigation, the agency filed a chargesheet against Dabholkar accusing him of cheating the people. When the case came up for hearing, Dabholkar pleaded guilty and confessed to the charges under which he was booked.

Following his confession, the court sentenced him to seven years simple imprisonment for duping people.