The Hindustan Times, a newspaper in India, is reporting that 13 deaths have been linked to Ponzi schemes operating in the West Bengal region.
The most recent death involved a man found hanging from a tree yesterday, the paper reported.
“As many as 12 people have committed suicide, and a director of a Ponzi scheme company has been killed since news of the failing of Saradha company broke in West Bengal,” the paper reported.
Read the story.
On May 6, Jordan D. Maglich — an attorney and the publisher of PonziTracker.com — reported that the alleged Saradha Ponzi scheme may gave duped “hundreds of thousands of Indian investors out of billions of dollars.”
From PonziTracker (italics added):
Shockwaves began emanating out of India in late April that Sudipta Sen, the man behind an Indian conglomerate known as the Saradha Group, was missing amid rumors of financial irregularities and increased scrutiny from India’s Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”). Sen’s Saradha Group operated a series of companies that offered ‘depositors’ the ability to invest in a wide range of ventures ranging from real estate to motor vehicles to even bio gas. Investors were offered the ability to make short-term investments with promised returns based on the duration.
Read the Ponzi Tracker story, which reports that an extensive network of approximately 300,000 agents may have been paid commissions to recruit new investors into the scheme.
Investors in developing countries may be particularly vulnerable to scams, with offers both pitched and viewed as a means to escape poverty. Ponzi hucksters typically target vulnerable populations, including senior citizens, families struggling to make ends meet and individuals facing dire economic futures, the prospect of a threadbare existence, mounting bills and other serious pain.
Because scams often trade online, they may cross national borders and inflict harm on vulnerable populations in multiple countries.
Not even well-to-do populations are safe, because the offers often are positioned as ways to protect income while making it grow.
