PESHAWAR: More than a 100,000 people in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are believed to have been scammed out of Rs.5.6 billion by an online investment company that investigators failed to crack down on despite early reports of fraud, officials, lawyers and victims of the crime have said.
The company, PSlash, opened an office in Peshawar’s Deans Trade Center in January this year, promising profits of up to 13 percent on investments in real estate and digital and foreign currency. On its last day of operation on November 19, the firm had 105,000 registered investors, a former employee told Arab News.
But on November 20, a notification appeared on the website: “System is hacked.” Since then, victims of the scam say they are unable to reach any of the people who had said they were employed with the company. Many have lost their entire lifesavings.
The loss could have been avoided, lawyers and victims of the fraud say, if investigators and regulators had reacted in time. Indeed, reports of problems with the company were filed months before the company shuttered in November.
Jamal Afridi, an attorney for Yaseen Ullah, one victim of the scam, said he first filed a fraud report with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on August 24 and another one with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on September 16, saying the agencies “were sleeping when we were knocking at their doors.”
“On behalf of Yaseen Ullah, I met high officials and submitted written complaints to PTA, FIA and police about the suspected fraud company PSlash but no one took it seriously,” the Supreme Court advocate told Arab News.
“If the concerned departments had taken action accordingly, this billions of rupee scam would not have happened in Peshawar,” he added. “Now the government should investigate this issue and punish the concerned officers ... because of their negligence thousands of people lost money.”
Asad Khan, a provincial officer at the FIA, admitted that the online fraud was worth “billions of rupees” but declined to comment when asked why investigators had not acted earlier, despite reports of fraud.
“Right now, we are not in a position to disclose the initial progress [in the case],” he said.
PTA spokesman Khurram Mehrab told Arab News that the regulator started investigating PSlash after receiving a complaint in September, but declined to give more details.
“After receiving the compliant, we started an investigation into this online fraud,” he said. “There are thousands of websites, and until there is a complaint, PTA can’t monitor each and every one.”
It is unclear to date who the owner of PSlash was, but one police report filed in Peshawar names a Rabia Batool. However, neither investors nor former employees of the company that Arab News spoke with have ever met Batool.
Victims said they were in touch with two men called Wasim Zeb and Nabeel Khan who presented themselves as local executives of the company.
“I only knew the local executives and they would tell us that PSlash is a worldwide [company] investing in forex, digital currency and real estate trade,” a former employee told Arab News on condition of anonymity.
He said the company had changed its name three times, from Earn Bitcoin to Payslash and finally to PSlash. When investors questioned its credibility, agents and managerial staff would tell them that it was registered with the Company Security Exchange of Pakistan (CSEP).
A database of companies on CSEP’s website does not include the name of PSlash.
For now, there is no respite for victims of the fraud, many of whom are poor laborers who invested their entire life savings in the scheme.
Muhammad Noor, a daily wage earner, said a friend advised him to borrow money from relatives to invest in PSlash and make a quick profit. He invested Rs2.5 million ($15,625).
“Now I am under an unbearable burden,” he said. “I have already sold my wife’s jewelry.”
Construction contractor Abid Afridi invested Rs500,000 ($3,125) and received one interest payment of Rs10,000 ($62.5) — but only in the first month after the investment.
“It’s very unfortunate and shocking for me and my family that we have lost our savings,” he said. “I am unaware of the legal process and no one knows what to do now.”
Abdur Rehman, who invested Rs1.5 million ($9,375) in the business, said he and several other investors had paid the money to PSlash in person and in cash.
In November, Rehman said, a few of the investors had managed to trace Zeb, the alleged company employee, who had promised to recover their lost funds.
“I am with you and will recover your money soon,” Rehman said, quoting Zeb from the meeting. “But he has since disappeared into thin air.”