Kerala hands over Highrich, Masters Finserv fraud cases to CBI

Thiruvananthapuram: The State Government issued an order handing over the Highrich financial fraud case to the CBI. The case was being investigated by the Cherpu Police. The procedures regarding the handing over were kept highly confidential.

The government had issued the notification in this regard last month itself, following which an order was issued on April 5 directing to hand over a performa report on the case immediately. The order instructed that the performance report be sent immediately to Delhi through the Economic Offences wing DySP.

Earlier, information, including that on the ED raids, were leaked to the accused. In this context, the procedures to hand over the case to the CBI were done with utmost secrecy. 
Apart from the Highrich case, the State Government has also handed over the Kochi-based Masters Finserv financial fraud case to the CBI.

Highrich Fraud

As per the police and ED reports, the Highrich company had committed financial fraud under the guise of online shopping. The police report mentioned that a fraud worth around Rs 1,630 crore was committed by the company. Even in the ED investigation as well, it was found that fraudulence worth crores of rupees was committed. It was also detected that transactions worth over one thousand crore rupees were made via HRCoin, a cryptocurrency, alone. It is also suspected that the money thus collected was smuggled abroad.

Thrissur natives K D Prathapan and wife Sreena Prathapan are the owners of Highrich Online Shoppe. The investigating team had earlier frozen as many as 55 bank accounts in which amounts worth Rs 212 crore were deposited.

The Highrich Online Platform had created dealers through multi-level marketing schemes.The company had claimed 680 shops across the country and 78 branches in Kerala. It was also found during the investigation that IDs of around 1.63 lakh dealers were in the hands of the company. In order to exaggerate the number of dealers, around 50 IDs were created for the same dealer.

Masters Finserv Fraud

An investment fraud worth crores was committed by the Kakkanad-based Masters Finserv, promising high profits through share market investments between June 25, 2018 and July 7, 2022. The company owners, Abin Varghese and his wife Sreeranjini had absconded to Dubai following the registration of the cases against them. The couple was arrested from Delhi later. The ED, which had initiated investigation against them on the basis of the different FIRs registered by the Kerala Police, attached their assets worth Rs 30 crore.