The Amboli (Bombay) police on November 22 arrested Saurabh Pandey, director of an entertainment company, for defrauding a US-based NRI woman of Rs. 1.33 crore. Pandey of Brainstorm Entertainment LLP befriended the woman on a dating site and persuaded her to invest money in a company, promising her lucrative returns. However, the lady neither got profit nor her capital back.
Saurabh Pandey threatened to harm her whenever she pestered him for her money and he also allegedly molested her in a hotel. On the NRI’s complaint, thr Amboli police on November 22 registered an FIR against Pandey and his co-director, Vandana Krishna. Pandey was arrested on November 22 and sent to five days’ police custody. The preliminary probe has revealed that he cheated many others including some politicians, to the tune of Rs. 5-6 crore collectively.
The NRI woman owns a data management firm in Georgia (USA) and has a flat at Jogeshwari West in Bombay. After befriending her, Pandey asked her to invest in his company which, he added, was establishing a firm for the Indian Premier League. She trusted him and, after receiving a draft agreement from him, invested Rs. 1.33 crore in his project. She added in her complaint to the police that whenever she asked Saurabh to sign the agreement, he would get angry and sidestep the issue.
The complainant’s sister said that the complainant, after her husband’s demise in an accident, came to India a few years earlier. It was here that she met Pandey on a dating app, happn. According to the police, there was already a criminal case registered against Saurabh Pandey in Chandigarh.
