New Delhi: A Rs 99-payment for a website domain, made using an SBI debit card in November 2015, led the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to the alleged mastermind of Pearlvine International—a Ponzi scheme that cheated lakhs of investors and generated proceeds of crime estimated at over Rs 1,500 crore. The man the ED has named as the architect of the scheme is Neeraj Kumar Gupta, a businessman from Northeast Delhi, who investigators allege purchased pearlvine.com from domain aggregator platform Bigrock.
“The debit card details proved to be the most clinching lead in this probe, unravelling the face as well as the mastermind of the fraud amounting to Rs 1,500 crore,” an ED official told ThePrint.
The agency earlier this year filed a prosecution complaint before an East Khasi Hills court in Meghalaya. The document, accessed by ThePrint, read: “The investigation under PMLA clearly establishes that the accused Sh. Neeraj Kumar Gupta is the actual owner and prime beneficiary of www.pearlvine.com, as well as the chief conspirator of the entire ponzi scheme running under the banner of Pearlvine International.”
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A classic scheme
Pearlvine International, which began operations in 2016 and shut shop in March 2023, had no real corporate existence. It operated entirely through its website, and its supposed founder—Dr Daniel Johnson—was a fictitious, US-based character allegedly fabricated by the promoters. The structure was that of a classic pyramid scheme.
New members paid Rs 2,250 to an existing member who introduced them, in exchange for which they received digital points (DP), a proprietary currency for transactions within the Pearlvine ecosystem.
The promoters pegged these points to the US dollar, crediting 30 DP at an exchange rate of Rs 75 per dollar.
Investors were promised that a single entry fee of Rs 2,250 would grow to Rs 32 lakh within three to four years.
Each member was also required to recruit four new members, and the platform ran six distinct income schemes. By the ED’s assessment, it was those at the base of the pyramid, members who had not yet recruited four more members, who bore the losses.
By 30 June 2022, according to ED, Pearlvine had 70 lakh registered users. Of these, 17.57 lakh members lost at least Rs 2,200 each, placing the direct fraud amount at Rs 395.35 crore. Based on Pearlvine’s projection of 70 lakh users, the ED assessed the total proceeds of crime at over Rs 1,500 crore.
How the case came to light & the digital trail
The scheme first came to light in 2019 when an assistant manager at the Reserve Bank of India’s Shillong branch filed a complaint with Meghalaya Police, alerting them to a ponzi operation running in Jowai, West Jaintia Hills district.
The Meghalaya CID registered a case under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, and provisions under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act and Information Technology (Amendment) Act.
Working through the referral chain on the ground, the CID traced Pearlvine’s local operations to a garment shop in West Jaintia Hills that Sony Chyrmang had been running since March 2019.
Chyrmang told investigators he had been introduced to the scheme by Krishna Kumar Singh of Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Singh said he had been brought in by one Loknath Sharma, who had himself been referred by Hariram Singhal—who had died by the time investigators reached that point in the chain.
The CID filed a chargesheet against Sharma, Singh, Sony Chyrmang, and his brother Khroborme Chyrmang, establishing that the Chyrmang brothers had collected funds and deposited them into accounts held by Sharma and Singh.
The ED–initiating a money laundering case against the accused–filed its own chargesheet in October 2024. But the identity of the scheme’s mastermind–and primary beneficiary—remained unknown at this time.
As the pearlvine website was defunct by then, ED investigators turned to archive.org to reconstruct the website’s digital trail from archival data.
From the website’s source code, they extracted a Google AdSense ID—the unique identifier through which Google tracks advertising volume and revenue for a website. This led them to Parvesh Saroha, proprietor of Network Hosting Group, a Sonipat-based firm in the business of server and website design and hosting, whose AdSense credentials had been used for Pearlvine’s advertisements. Saroha was subsequently charged for money laundering.
The decisive lead, however, came from Bigrock.
In response to the ED’s queries, the platform provided the payment details used to register the domain. KYC records and bank account analysis of the SBI debit card used in the Rs 99 transaction identified the buyer as Neeraj Kumar Gupta.
SPVs, films & Rs 60 crore
The ED alleges that Gupta, along with his wife Preeti Gupta, founded five companies between 2019 and 2022: Speedwell IT Solutions, Shreehans Arts and Creations, Shreehans Developers and Construction, Shreehans Diagnostic, and Dominus Resorts and Estates. The agency describes all five as special purpose vehicles for laundering proceeds of crime.
One of these companies, Shreehans Arts and Creations, was used to produce a Bollywood film titled Jaggu Ki Lalten in 2022, in which Gupta also starred in a key role.
The couple had earlier also produced two films—Vinash Kaal and Vishh: Poison.
During questioning, investigators said, Gupta said he had tried supplying tea leaves and running an electrical shop in Chandni Chowk before moving into brokerage. He said he had taught himself website development by 2011 and had built up 100 clients by 2018.
The ED was unconvinced. “Therefore, he is found to be making wrong and untrue submissions under oath so as to confuse the Directorate. He was the ultimate beneficiary of the funds collected in the name of Pearlvine; he received cash from members in exchange for issuance of Digital Points (DP) for account activation and membership upgradation, and thereafter diverted the said cash through entry-provider entities into his personal bank accounts and the accounts of his controlled companies. He utilised such Proceeds of Crime for the acquisition of assets to the tune of Rs 60,88,31,859 (Rs 60.88 crore),” the agency said in its submission to the court.
Overall, 17 people, including the Gupta couple, and their associates have been named as accused in the case.
Advocate Salil Srivastav, representing the Guptas, denied the allegations against the two. “The ED has not been able to substantiate with credible evidence the total number of users who signed up to the alleged ponzi scheme. For them to establish money laundering, they have to substantiate and quantify the proceeds of crime and then establish my client’s role in its generation and recoupment. The ED has not explained either of these,” Srivastav told ThePrint.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)