Petitions from victims of the investment scam being received at the Collectorate in Madurai on Monday.
| Photo Credit: R. ASHOK
Scores of victims of the FQL investment app scam, which surfaced last week, from southern districts, including Madurai, Sivaganga, and Dindigul, filed petitions at the weekly grievance meeting held at the Collectorate here on Monday.Police said the victims of the scam were concentrated in Melur area of Madurai and Natham in Dindigul, while additional losses were reported at Singampunari in Sivaganga and Samayanallur and Alanganallur in Madurai. The scamsters operated through local agents, and the investment application lured rural residents by falsely promising to double their money.Pothumponnu from Madurai lost nearly ₹3 lakh to the fraudsters. Her husband Veerappan, who accompanied her to the Collectorate, said they had mortgaged gold jewellery to repay a loan taken to purchase a new autorickshaw. “But my wife was lured by promises made by her neighbours. On seeing other investors receiving payouts through the app, she got tempted and handed over the money without even consulting me.”Seeing her initial deposits reflected in US dollars on the FQL mobile app convinced her that massive returns were on their way. However, it was only three days ago — after neighbours reported that the app had crashed — that Pothumponnu realised that she too had been scammed.Nachi, a daily wage worker from Singampunari in Sivaganga district, lost ₹1 lakh. She said she gained confidence about the app after local agents Arun, Ranjith, and Sathya, who have been identified as primary culprits, gathered a group of prospective investors at a marriage hall on Azhagar Koil Road in Madurai. “We felt assured we would not be scammed after seeing all other people who were going to invest through the app.”Further, their suspicions were not aroused even when one of the other agents denied her payouts because she was placated with a promise that her money would simply be rolled over into a different scheme called VG Investment.Krishna, a young local contractor from Melur, who earns a modest income, mortgaged his mother’s gold jewellery to invest ₹4 lakh in the application. “I will have to work for at least five years just to repay the money. Although we knew about the awareness campaigns conducted by police on online scams, the personal touch made us trust it so completely that we never suspected it was a fake app,” he said.In order to bolster the deception, the local agents even arranged calls with foreign nationals who supposedly designed the investment plans and calculated the high returns that investors could expect.Following thousands of complaints received from cheated public, the office of the Director General of Police/Head of Police Force, in a press release, said: “Considering the role of each accused, extent of the network, inter-district nature of the alleged fraud, large number of victims, reported financial loss, involvement of cryptocurrency transactions, including USDT and Binance wallets, and suspected international linkages, in order to ensure systematic, in-depth investigation and in the interest of public, DGP Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal has ordered transfer of all six cases initially registered to the Economic Offences Wing.” Published - August 31, 2026 07:25 pm IST
