A mother-son duo who spent nearly five years as tenants in a Mau landlord’s house have been accused of using that trust to run an alleged forex and gold trading fraud that is now believed to have touched more than 20 investors across the city. Police have registered an FIR against Umakant Rajbahadur Singh and his mother, Prabhavati Devi, both residents of Khiriya village under Ranipur police station, following complaints and directions from the Superintendent of Police.
The complainant, Harishchandra Lal Srivastava of Sahadatpura, alleges his family alone lost around ₹30 lakh after Umakant, who had lived in Srivastava’s house as a tenant for years, presented himself as an expert in forex and gold trading and promised substantial returns within a short period. The years of proximity between landlord and tenant, investigators say, appear to have functioned as the primary mechanism through which trust, and eventually money, changed hands.
A pitch built on years of familiarity
According to the complaint, Umakant’s alleged pitch followed a pattern common to informal investment fraud: a confident self-presentation as someone with specialised trading knowledge, paired with promises that currency and gold trading could multiply money quickly. Because the claims came from someone the family had known closely for years, rather than a stranger or an online advertisement, the usual scepticism that might greet an unsolicited investment offer seems to have been set aside.
The alleged fraud was not confined to the landlord’s household. Balram Singh, another tenant in the same building, along with his relatives, was also allegedly drawn into the scheme, contributing a further ₹15 lakh. As word of the case spread, police say more than 20 additional people across Mau may have handed over money to the accused, a figure investigators are still working to confirm as complaints continue to surface.
Payments were reportedly made through a mix of online transactions and cheques, both of which leave a traceable financial record that investigators are now examining closely. When the promised returns failed to arrive on schedule and investors began pressing for repayment, the complaint alleges the accused offered delays and excuses before eventually becoming unreachable, prompting the victims to approach the police.
A scam type that regulators have flagged repeatedly
Informal forex and gold trading schemes of this kind sit squarely within a category Indian regulators have warned about with increasing urgency. Retail forex speculation outside a narrow set of rupee-based currency derivatives traded on recognised exchanges is illegal under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, and the Reserve Bank of India maintains a public alert list, expanded repeatedly through 2025 and into 2026, naming unauthorised platforms offering such trading to Indian residents. Officials have been explicit that schemes promising guaranteed returns from forex trading, especially those built around recruiting new investors rather than demonstrable trading activity, bear the hallmarks of a Ponzi structure rather than a legitimate investment.
The scale such schemes can reach became evident just months earlier, when police in Maharashtra’s Mira Bhayander-Vasai Virar region dismantled an international forex and gold trading racket worth more than ₹200 crore, in which victims were groomed through matrimonial and social media platforms before being funnelled into fraudulent investment schemes, with proceeds moved through mule accounts and allegedly laundered abroad. While the Mau case is far smaller in scale, its underlying mechanics, an ostensibly credible individual, promises of exceptional returns and a widening circle of victims, mirror the template regulators have flagged nationally.
Financial trail now the focus
Preliminary examination of the accused’s bank accounts has so far found no significant funds remaining, according to details emerging from the complaint, leaving investigators to trace where the collected money went. Police are scrutinising bank statements, cheque payments, online transaction records and any documents purporting to relate to trading activity, while also trying to establish whether any of the money was genuinely invested through a legitimate platform or whether the arrangement operated without real trading behind it.
Efforts are also underway to trace the current whereabouts of Umakant and Prabhavati Devi, who police say have not yet been located since the FIR was registered. As the investigation progresses, officers expect to establish a clearer picture of the total amount collected, the full number of victims and the complete trail the funds took after leaving investors’ accounts.
The case underscores a caution regulators have repeated often but which continues to go unheeded in cases built on personal relationships rather than public advertising: independent verification of an entity’s registration and trading platform matters just as much, if not more, when the person offering the investment is someone already known and trusted.
“Fraud built on years of personal familiarity is often harder for victims to recognise in real time, precisely because the relationship itself is doing the persuasive work that a stranger’s pitch would never manage,” said Prof. Triveni Singh, a cybercrime expert and former IPS officer.
