Authorities in the United States have charged two Indians over an alleged investment fraud of US$300 million.
Paramjit ‘Paul’ Parmar (48) and Ravi Chivukula (44), along with Sotirios Zaharis - all involved with a private company - have been charged with conspiracy to commit a securities fraud after they were alleged to have orchestrated a “widespread scheme to defraud investors” of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The FBI arrested Mr Parmar on Wednesday while the other two accused are on the run.
Parmar, Zaharis and Chivukula were formerly the CEO, CFO and an executive director of a publicly traded healthcare services company.
According to the complaint unsealed on Wednesday, the trio allegedly utilised fraudulent methods to “grossly inflate” the value of an unnamed publically traded company they were intending to take private and tricked others into believing it was worth substantially more than its actual value.
To fund the transaction to take the company private, a private investment company and a consortium of financial institutions provided over US$210 million.
The Department of Justice said in a statement that the alleged fraud, committed from May 2015 through to September 2017, was discovered when the trio resigned from their positions with the company or had their employment terminated.
On March 16 2018, the company and numerous of its affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy, attributing the company’s financial demise, in large part, to the alleged fraud scheme.
The men are also alleged to have created fictitious operating companies in sham acquisitions and falsifying bank records of these alleged sham subsidiaries to generate a phone picture of their company’s revenue stream.
Separately, authorities have filed a separate civil case on Wednesday to forfeit of four properties that Mr Parmar owns, including a house and three apartments in New York City. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against all three accused.
Last month, the FBI arrested another Indian-American, Sohrab Sharma in connection with an alleged US$60 million cryptocurrency fraud.
