Indian Collapse

March 3, 2008 (LBO) – India is deploying crack sleuths to track down the operators of a Goldquest-Questnet scheme in the Karnataka state after thousands of victims complained to the police, media reports said. "Initial investigations into the fraud committed by Quest-Net India Limited has revealed the firm had duped people to the tune of several hundred crores (hundreds of thousands of rupees) across the country," the Deccan Herald said.

"Interestingly, the directors of this Chennai-based company, including MD Pushpam Appal Naidu, are now ˜out of the country’.

"Police have no information about their whereabouts."

Last month agency reports out of Kabul said the Afghan government had banned the scheme.

The Deccan Herald said city police would hand over the case to the Corps of Detectives, a state-wide investigations authority.

The number of victims in Bangalore has increased from 800 to 2,500 in just a week.

Reports indicate that the scheme had been previously banned or collapsed in Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Philippines and the UAE.

However after a few years, when the furore dies down, it crops up again. The scheme uses a multilevel or referral syst