Bhubaneswar: Odisha EOW arrested one more accused Ratnakar Palai yesterday from Bhubaneswar in the STA Crypto-ponzi scam. The accused will be produced before OPID Court in Cuttack today.
This refers to EOW case No-22/2023. Ratnakar (45) is an important up-line member of STA having a large number of members working under him (known as down-line members in the MLM/ pyramid-based schemes/ scams). He is very close to Gurtej Singh Sidhu and Nirod Das.
Ratnakar is an M.Tech in IT from Karnataka University in Bangalore and claims to be an international speaker, entrepreneur, and investment guru. He is also the propaganda head/ social media influencer of STA in Odisha. He used to run a YouTube channel for wider publicity of this fake scheme.
Ratnakar is a member of some other dubious scams too which is under scrutiny. He also runs an institute namely ‘Learn to Earn’. However, after the arrest of Gurtej and Nirod, he either deleted or deactivated his social media accounts. He earlier visited Goa along with Nirod to participate in a celebration of the STA, a press release issued by the EOW in this regard mentioned.
It is pertinent to mention, OPID Court granted five more days of remand for both Gurtej and Nirod on August 11. EOW had made a prayer for the extension as the case is very complex involving multiple states and a huge amount of money. The accused are needed to be interrogated on various aspects of the scam like money trail (siphoning off money)/ Benami transactions/ money laundering, network in other countries, involvement of NRIs, particularly Canada and Dubai-based NRIs if any, information about heads of other states and their networking, finance, organisational and technical management, event and celebrity management, money transaction with David Gez and other top associates/ members of this scam, important YouTubers and group administrators of Whatsapp groups of this scam.
EOW has issued an advisory to people not to invest their hard-earned money in such MLM/ponzi schemes which shows them the dream of becoming millionaires in an unrealistically short time. One may get some initial benefits but ultimately they will use a huge amount of money. In such schemes, not only do people suffer but they make many others suffer too by adding them as down-line members.
There is a plethora of good and legal investment options and people should try them.
EOW also issued an advisory to film stars and other celebrities to check the credentials of the party/ company/ organization before endorsing/ promoting such schemes/ programmes.