It was the first time I was talking to him since we passed out of college 3 years back. He was very excited. He said he had a business opportunity which offers unprecedented returns. I was skeptical. I asked him for details. He said its very confidential and details would be revealed only to business partners. To become a business partner one needs to invest around ten lakhs. All I could do was wish him all the best.
Three months later, I got a call again. He said another slot opened for a business partner. I would have to pass 3 rounds to be able to invest 10 lakhs to become a business partner. Fortunately, there was no entrance fee to attend the interview. I agreed to attend. The only compromise I had to make was wear some suffocating formals.
The interviews were a strange affair. The first round was telephonic. My friend put us in a conference call. It went on something like this -
"We are a conglomerate... buzz bzzzz.... ssssttaaatic... prefer partners to employees because employees work for salary... bzzzz buzz...." call disconnects.
Again I get a call from my friend putting us in a conference call. Why can't he call directly? Is it a ruse to maintain secrecy? I was growing more and more suspicious.
Apart from nonsense information dissipation, the only question he asked me was
"Do you trust your friend so much that if he asks you to jump in a well, will you jump?"
By the end of the interview, I was none the wiser. The Company remains anonymous, the nature of work unknown.
Shortly, my friend called me to say I was selected and a face to face round has been scheduled the following day at 1:45pm and location details will be given at 1:30pm, the general area being Banjara Hills. More secrecy, alarm bells were going off. I had just two things in my mind, find out what is going on and save my friend if this is some fraud.
At 1:37pm the next day, I got a call from a lady asking me to come to a coffee shop!
I reached there by 1:50pm and was met by a rather thin lady. She gave me the impression that she was interviewing a sales boy. As I started talking to her, this impression only strengthened.
Ten minutes of general talk and then she started talking about the guy who would be interviewing me.
"Ateet Sir" was how she addressed him. These were a few phrases she used.
"He got a BMW in one year in this business"
"I cannot believe I am working with a millionire"
"Such high position and so humble"
"I love him, he is like a brother to me, I share everything with him"
I was completely annoyed. She would deflect any question about The Company she was representing. I would have left if not for my resolution to find out what the hell was going on.
Enter Ateet Sir, a North Indian in his early thirties, perhaps from Delhi.
"Tell me about yourself", he says.
"Tell me about your company", I wanted to ask but then decided to play along. I wanted to appear dumb and eager to mint money.
The interview was a total farce. Some of the nonsense philosophy uttered by the lady was repeated by him word for word. The only information I could get was he is into e-commerce. He believes the real estate boom would now reflect in e-commerce and that should be the field everyone should be investing.
He threw in numbers like math was at his finger tips.
"Hyderabad population 2-3 crore, target 10%, 20-30 lakh people spending Rs10 a month"
"40 crore per month, you get 10 percent, so 40 lakh per month"
"Flipkart is still at loss, how are you making a profit?", I asked
"We have a different strategy and we have some exclusive products", he replies.
So I asked him for a website where I could go ahead and shop for some stuff.
"All details would be revealed in the next round", he says.
"I want to shop as a customer and not as a business partner", I repeated.
"There is a process for everything. All details will be revealed in the next round"
For the next round to happen, I would need to have proofs of bank accounts showing a minimum balance of 6 lakhs. He warned me it would happen at a very short notice and not necessarily in Hyderabad.
Clearly, it was a fraud. So how does it work?
There is no dearth of innocent people around. So assuming 10 people invest 10 lakhs per month, that would be 1 Crore and considering 30% profit and negligible operational costs, each person would be getting back 7 lakhs of their money for some dummy work at home. I confirmed this with my friend, he got back 2 lakhs in first 20 days but would not reveal what happened after that. Oh yes, he even went on a field trip to Dubai.
So do they keep raising hopes the so called business partners, ask them to invest more and more until they are broke? Do they keep some people happy by paying them and dumping others saying their work is not good and they lost their investment?
My friend put his complete trust on them, "Ateet sir is God. I would be privileged to spend 5 mins with him", he says.
Can this racket be busted? Or can they survive as long as there are innocent people out there?
The only information I have about The Company is this person Ateet Saraf. Googling I found this seemingly false linkedIn profile
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ateet-saraf/59/509/346
The photo has very slight resemblance to what he looks like now. Maybe it is at least 10 years old.
EDIT: (on 23rd October, 2014)
The linkedIn profile above is deleted. Here is the photo which was in the profile
