In a shocking case of betrayal of trust, at least 56 investors in Gujarat's Dholka town have been allegedly cheated out of a staggering sum of nearly Rs 30 crore. The masterminds behind what police are calling one of the state's most audacious Ponzi schemes are from a jewellery house with a legacy of nearly 100 years.
The Bait: High Returns from Physical Silver
The accused, identified as Ghanshyam Soni and his sons Yash and Deep, leveraged the credibility of their family's generations-old jewellery business to launch a sophisticated investment fraud. Police officials stated that the scheme, which ran for nearly two years, used physical silver metal as the primary bait.
Ahmedabad rural SP Omprakash Jat explained the modus operandi. "This is a rare case in Gujarat where physical silver metal was used as the bait for an investment fraud," he said. The accused promised investors unusually high and steady returns, irrespective of market volatility. When silver was priced around Rs 80,000 per kilogram, they allegedly guaranteed fixed monthly returns ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 per kg.
The Collapse and Disappearance
The scheme began to unravel around Diwali last year. Investors who demanded their money or the promised silver were reportedly placated with excuses about the festive rush and assured of a full settlement with profits after the holidays. However, in a well-orchestrated disappearance, the Soni family vanished in the last week of December.
They switched off their phones, locked their family home, and shut down all their known business premises, leaving investors in the lurch. Investigations revealed that just before their disappearance, the accused had opened a lavish showroom costing around Rs 3 crore in Dholka's Kalikund area and purchased a high-end luxury car, allegedly using investors' funds.
Scale of the Fraud and Police Investigation
Initially, 16 investors approached the Dholka town police with complaints of being cheated of Rs 6.4 crore. This money was collected under the pretext of being invested in silver and for making jewellery. However, as multiple police teams dug deeper, the scale of the fraud expanded dramatically.
A senior police officer involved in the probe stated, "We identified around 40 more investors who were duped. The amount has already touched nearly Rs 30 crore, and may go up as more victims come forward." The police have registered an FIR for criminal breach of trust, cheating, and other relevant charges.
Investigators believe the fraud was pre-planned. The steady payouts in the initial phase were merely a tactic to build confidence and lure victims into investing larger sums. As investments surged, silver deliveries reportedly stopped, and returns on earlier investments were allegedly paid using fresh deposits from new victims—a classic hallmark of a Ponzi scheme.
Police are now actively contacting potential victims to uncover the full extent of what is emerging as one of Gujarat's most unusual and large-scale silver-based investment scams, built on the broken trust of a century-old family business.
