New Delhi: Shreyas Sariwan from Chhattisgarh invested about Rs 1.5 lakh in SD Pay app last year after his former school principal told him about the returns on offer. Sariwan couldn’t but trust his principal.
By September this year, Sariwan thought of withdrawing his money. That’s right after he started seeing videos about the SD Pay app on YouTube; it seemed to be everywhere. “I clicked on one such YouTube video and found out how it was all a scam. I had not known. All my money went to fraud… I couldn’t believe it, I just closed the app and sat down wondering how all the documents with government approvals that I was shown were actually all a part of a large-scale scam,” Sariwan, a 26-year-old clerk employed in the state education department, told ThePrint.
On his phone, messages were flooding the ‘Group Diamond Apna Pay’, a WhatsApp community connecting SD Pay investors.
“Good news. Hello to all my family. We are happy to inform you all that the work of Public Limited Company in MCA has been completed and Immediate Payment system (IMPS) service will start smoothly from Thursday. All the remaining services will start in turn soon. Sorry for the inconvenience,” the admin posted on the group on 6 September, offering false hopes as the multi-crore digital investment scheme finally collapsed.
In September, the Amreli Police in Gujarat busted an alleged Rs 1,211 crore digital investment scam involving the SD Pay app, which reportedly duped more than 6.52 lakh people across the nation through a multi-level marketing (MLM) network, officials told ThePrint. Twelve people have been arrested so far in connection with the fraud, while investigators have recorded statements from around 900 individuals and received more than 800 complaints through the 1930 cybercrime helpline. A two-month-long investigation by the police revealed the scale of the alleged fraud. The number of affected investors is more than 6.52 lakh, with the app, launched in 2024, reportedly recording nearly 15 lakh downloads.
Both the Enforcement Directorate and the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) have sought details regarding the crime from Amreli Police.
How it worked
For Sariwan, from Pengha in Chhattisgarh, the trap was not created by an anonymous scammer, but by a trusted contact. His former school principal introduced him to SD Pay, explaining that a minimum deposit of Rs 1,000 would unlock daily reward points and high returns.
“The platform presented itself as a mainstream fintech wallet, we could scan a QR code, it allowed everyday transactions, and I was forwarded official-looking documentation claiming registration with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI),” Sariwan said.
“I had no doubt,” he added. “I thought it was just like Paytm or Google Pay. The app showed profitable balances every day, so there was no reason to suspect a scam.”
Trusting the pitch, Sariwan downloaded the app sometime between September and October 2025. Over the following months, he poured his salary into the platform, along with a personal loan.
The facade began to collapse in March and April 2026, when withdrawals were abruptly suspended. Yet, promoters kept investors on the hook through frequent calls and reassurance messages.
It wasn’t until August 2026, while scrolling through YouTube, that Sariwan stumbled across news videos detailing police raids and high-profile arrests of the app’s masterminds in Odisha. “I clicked on a video and realised it was all a fraud,” Sariwan said.
Sariwan immediately alerted members of ‘Group Diamond Apna Pay’, a WhatsApp community of 103 investors, including highly educated professionals and PhD holders who had a total of nearly Rs 20 lakh trapped in the scheme. “Despite ongoing updates on social media pages promising incoming debit cards, credit cards, and instant IMPS withdrawals under the rebranded name ‘Apna Pay’, I recognised the trap,” he said.
Sariwan’s savings are gone. The fraud has left him deeply cautious: he no longer clicks on unfamiliar links, and scrutinises every digital transaction.
‘Will seek criminal action no matter what’
A resident of Amreli, Gujarat, Vanitaben Manubhai takes time to trust people.
Living with her parents in Amreli while pregnant and caring for her 1.5-year-old daughter, Kiara, she spends most of her days taking care of the house. She now finds herself recalling how her family’s financial future and bank balance has been reduced to nothing, by an app called SD Pay aka Apna Pay.
Vanitaben told ThePrint how it began in December 2025 when her husband, Narendrakumar Rameshbhai Mahida, met his friend Ashwinbhai Vinjuda from Mota Zinzuda.
Ashwinbhai told Mahida about an “effortless digital investment” that he was involved in. This was SD Pay, and he had invested for three months, pulling a solid 9 per cent monthly return, he said.
“It was stated that mobile recharge, bill payment, ticket booking, money transfer facilities are also available in Google Pay and PhonePe. Further, Ashwinbhai said that if we connect other people under us and get them to start the SD Pay application and invest in this way, we get 30 per cent of the profit made by the people connected under us and in this way, different percentages of return are given by investing different amounts,” Vanitaben told the police.
She said, “Also, this application can be started by investing at least Rs 1,000, and when money is needed, it can be withdrawn from the application to your bank account.”
Hooked, Mahida met Ashwinbhai’s maternal uncle, Gautambhai Vaghela, in Vanda village. Vaghela showed him a professionally designed promotional brochure detailing level-1 percentages, cashback structures, and operational backing from Surat-based key figures Ashishbhai Gedia and Bhaveshbhai Chauhan. To prove the system worked, Vaghela transferred an initial Rs 10,000 on 27 December 2025.
Though Vanitaben initially urged caution, the early returns on her husband’s phone rendered her nitpicking indefensible. Soon, the app was installed on Vanitaben’s and her father-in-law Rameshbhai’s phones, each seeded with a Rs 1,000 deposit. “It seemed legitimate,” she said.
Convinced by the daily compounding numbers that went up on her mobile screen, the family upped their stake. On 2 February 2026, Vanitaben transferred Rs 5,00,000 from her HDFC Bank account into a virtual account on the app. Two days later, her father-in-law matched it. The Rs 10 lakh they had put in represented years of family savings that was now locked in an app on their phone.
“This was not just a cyber fraud, our trust was looted,” Mahida told ThePrint. “How will we ever trust a phone call or an online payment again?”
By March this year, fractures began to appear, the app being rebranded to ‘Apna Pay’, for one. “The withdrawal gateway locked up, followed by the sudden halt of IMPS, bill payments, and recharges,” Mahida told ThePrint.
When Mahida pressured Vaghela for answers, he was met with excuses. “He told me updates were underway, permissions were pending, and assured everyone things would be normal by 15 August 2026,” said Mahida.
But Independence Day came and went, and “normal” was still missing. As was their money.
Mahida’s family wasn’t the only one. Across Savarkundla, Lunidhar, and beyond, multiple families had fallen into the same digital web.
On 2 September, Vanitaben decided to file a report at the Cybercrime Police Station in Amreli under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act, 2019, Gujarat Financial Institutions (Protection of Interest of Depositors) Act, 2003, Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978. and the IT Act.
Anatomy of the scam
Said one senior Amreli Police source, “The mechanics behind SD Pay and Apna Pay shows a deliberate, highly sophisticated combination of mainstream digital-wallet convenience with classic multi-level financial pyramid dynamics.”
According to the source, the platform was “deliberately designed” to lower the technical and psychological barriers to entry for everyday users in Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. “The promoters, directors, managers, agents and other unknown associates of the application, in a pre-planned criminal conspiracy, organised and lured the public to provide extraordinary financial returns in a short time,” the source added.
Another police source said that investors, through the SD Pay online application, “illegally ran a financial scheme, opened an account in the application, lured people to invest by promising 9 per cent return cashback and other attractive returns every month”.
The source said this created “confidence in the investors and in the initial stage”. “After paying the return cashback amount to some investors and encouraging more people to invest, [the accused] collected a large amount of deposits and investment money from the investors,” the source added.
The accused then “closed various services of the application, changed the name of the application from SD Pay to Apna Pay, did not return the invested amount of the investors, and committed fraud and cheating against the complainant and other investors”.
Framed superficially as a “comprehensive digital utility ecosystem”, the app allowed users to perform everyday transactions such as “mobile recharges, utility bill payments, and ticket bookings, mimicking established, trusted digital payment interfaces like Google Pay and PhonePe”.
The source said the app’s operators integrated a 15-level referral pyramid structure to rapidly scale its user base without relying on traditional advertising. Existing investors were incentivised to act as recruiters, promised lucrative returns including a 30 per cent profit share from the financial volume generated by users directly beneath them in the chain.
To create “absolute trust” among early adopters, the platform initially operated with complete liquidity. Users were allowed to seamlessly transfer micro-deposits, starting as low as Rs 1,000, and execute hassle-free cash withdrawals directly back into their linked bank accounts.
“This deliberate early withdrawal created a sense of stability. Satisfied users became active evangelists, circulating promotional brochures, hosting community recruitment meetings, and broadcasting positive experiences across social media channels,” said the source. This peer-to-peer “trust framework” systematically bypassed traditional financial caution.
Behind the app’s user interface lies a dark model of corporate shell entities and spoofed payment gateways. According to another senior police source, the incoming capital was systematically diverted away from legitimate escrow mechanisms into accounts registered under a web of corporate fronts, including S.D. Hub (OPC) Pvt Ltd, Shiv Dharati Communication Pvt Ltd, Shivdharti Technology Pvt Ltd, Upay Digi Payment India Ltd, Upay Digi India Pvt Ltd, U Payment India Ltd, Oneclick Fintech India Pvt Ltd, and Advik Info Pvt Ltd.
Police sources emphasised that the entire ecosystem functioned on a “classic Ponzi model”. “It included capital deposited by new entrants that was used to fund the high monthly cashback returns paid to earlier participants.”
However, the systemic collapse began around March 2026, when the inflow of fresh retail investments began to slow down.
“As liquidity dried up, the operators executed a multi-stage exit strategy,” said the second police source, who detailed how they disabled the withdrawal gateway within the app, followed shortly by the sudden termination of IMPS functionality, utility bill payments, and mobile recharges. He said the accused, including Surat-based organisers Ashishbhai Gedia and Bhaveshbhai Chauhan, shared false narratives to stall police’s intervention and suppress victim panic.
“They claimed the app was undergoing routine server upgrades, regulatory compliance reviews, and service migrations, promising full restoration by 15 August 2026. As chaos grew, the promoters attempted a secondary deception, offering investors non-existent pre-Initial Public Offering (IPO) company shares in exchange for their locked wallet balances under the guise of an upcoming stock market listing,” said the police source.
Simultaneously, alleged core masterminds Dhaval Patel and Narendra Solanki quietly attempted to relocate their operational infrastructure to Maharashtra under the new brand Apna Pay, attempting to reset the cycle before the police intervened.
12 arrests, 826 cyber-fraud complaints
The Amreli Police’s investigation into the SD Pay scam has revealed one of the largest multi-state digital fraud networks in recent history, exposing operational links stretching across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. The police also constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) that has arrested 12 primary accused.
Early arrests included Surat-based promoters Ashishbhai Chhaganbhai Gedia and Bhaveshbhai Dhirubhai Chauhan, along with key associates Nishi Satyanarayan Prasad, Sohilbhai Jitendrakumar Makwana, and Niravkumar Arvindbhai Patel. Subsequently, police tracking led to the capture of primary app owner Dhaval Govindbhai Patel and Hiren Mukeshbhai Shah in Sambalpur, Odisha, while trainer Bhaveshbhai Arvindbhai Ghanecha was apprehended in Virar, Maharashtra. Other key arrests include Mushtaq Ahmadsha Diwan, director of Chakravat News Channel, and Santosh Kanaiyalal Pathak from Vapi.
Financial forensics have exposed a massive paper trail. Analysis of the platform’s digital infrastructure revealed over 15 lakh total app users, with 271 direct first-level referral accounts branching out into an estimated 1.5 to 2.5 lakh regular depositors.
The SIT identified 40 core corporate bank accounts utilised by the shell companies to collect deposits, which collectively processed a staggering transaction volume of Rs 2,033 crore. Cross-referencing these corporate accounts on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCCRP) uncovered 826 formal cyber-fraud complaints. An additional 88 individual bank accounts belonging to the 12 arrested accused were traced, linking them to 16 extra NCCRP complaints; all identified bank accounts have been officially frozen.
To secure digital evidence, the SIT seized database records across three forensic hard drives. The police have also impounded physical assets purchased through crime proceeds, including vehicles, registered under third-party names, diamond-studded gold jewellery, and 11 computer systems seized from news channel offices used to run viral promotional campaigns.
To manage the massive victim pool, police have recorded 882 formal in-person witness statements and collected verified digital testimony from 1,148 additional victims via Google Forms. With lookout circulars and no-fly orders issued for absconding key operatives, including Narendra Kangre and Narendra Solanki, the SIT continues to gather evidence against nine identified key suspects to trace the full extent of the laundered funds.
Taking time to trust people
Another resident of Baroda, Seema (name changed upon request), a single mother and a government schoolteacher, moved back to India years after a divorce following her marriage in Muscat.
She has been raising her child alone, so financial security was always her biggest worry. That is why she first said no when fellow schoolteachers brought an agent to her home in July 2025, promising digital returns.
“A few days later, the agent returned, and he had a proper sales pitch ready. He told me the app was ‘government-approved’, it had an escrow wallet where nobody would touch my money, and it operated just like Google Pay or Paytm,” Seema told ThePrint.
To overcome her doubts, the agent even offered a guarantee.
“He gave me a blank signed HDFC Bank cheque as collateral in case of fraud. I felt they had provided me with answers for all security questions, so I opened an account with Rs 5,000,” she said. Soon, early returns started to come into her account. There were weekly Zoom calls to build the trust since it was a booming enterprise.
Convinced of the app’s safety, Seema began recruiting other people as well. Through her referral code, 30 more people joined, creating a network that expanded into an 800-member team. The group included farmers, fellow teachers, and local professionals. Seema herself brought in 13 friends and 11 immediate family members—including her 70-year-old mother, her sister, and brother.
Over time, her digital wallet had massive returns of Rs 20,000 to 25,000 a day. When she asked the agents how such high profits were possible, promoters sent presentations showing escrow frameworks and foreign compliance, assuring users that escrow wallets guaranteed total safety.
There were Rajasthan-based promoters, working with key mastermind Dhaval Patel. Seema said that the company “hosted lavish seminars at farmhouses near Vadodara, offering free dining, ads, and promises of company-issued debit cards, vendor machines, and sound boxes”.
“The promoters pitched dreams of a multi-year ecosystem, claiming rewards would run guaranteed until 2028 before transitioning into massive equity gains. I even purchased tickets costing thousands of rupees for a grand corporate event planned at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, where brand ambassadors were to be announced,” she said.
Driven by trust, Seema put in her life’s assets. She sold her one-bedroom-kitchen flat for Rs 10 lakh, adding Rs 9 lakh of her direct savings, while her mother invested Rs 7 lakh. Her sister contributed another Rs 5 lakh. Across her referral network, people pooled in tens of lakhs, with one local farmer taking out a massive gold loan to invest.
The facade began to collapse when IMPS withdrawals froze. Promoters repeatedly cited server upgrades, promising full restoration by 15 August.
But when 15 August arrived, the platform shut down completely.
Red flags escalated when a lawyer within Seema’s team raised technical questions about the escrow wallet on Zoom, and no agent responded. As Seema confronted the promoters in a heated meeting, agents vanished overnight, calls went unanswered and messages undelivered.
Pushed to the brink and afraid of losing everything that she had, Seema herself walked into a police station with a bottle of poison, having called the cybercops multiple times and discovering that her own bank account had been frozen due to systemic cyber-complaints.
“How will I survive? How will I buy my mother’s medicine?” she told them. “What will I even do?”
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)