57 held for involvement in fraud racket, Rs 2.7 cr frozen from firms account

A total of 57 people from different parts of the country has been arrested for their alleged hand in a racket involving Vihaan Direct Selling Pvt Ltd, a multi-level marketing company, police said here Tuesday. A sum of Rs 2.7 crore in the bank account of Vihaan Direct Selling has been frozen, the police said.

The godown of the company in Bengaluru and the office of Transview Enterprises, which is a marketing agency for Q Net products, also in Bengaluru, have been sealed, they said. Vihaan Direct Selling, formerly known as Gold Quest, is a franchise of a Hong Kong-based multi-level marketing (MLM) company owned by the QI group of companies.

The company was allegedly involved in many Ponzi schemes and binary schemes and vacation packages among others, a press release from the police said. The Q Net or the Vihaan business model is a simple pyramid scheme in which the early entrants called independent representatives (IR) gets money upon enroling more IRs in the system. Vihaan is engaged in direct selling of various products for QNET in India in the categories of home care, personal care, Skin Care, health food supplements, watches and holiday packages through e-commerce.