The plan was simple. A minimum investment of ₹5,750 and a maximum of ₹57,500 for a yearly subscription. Depending on the amount paid, he got a fixed number of links on his e-mail every day. He had to click, click, click... just like a game. Pankaj Singh Kushwala was tempted by the prospect of extra cash after hearing great things about this new Facebook-related scheme from people around him. All of them felt beholden to a young entrepreneur, 26-year-old Anubhav Mittal, who had seemingly cracked an ingenious code to help them make money through Facebook. Like Kushwala, nearly seven lakh people linked their fate to Mittal, including many who left regular jobs to depend completely on his Social Trade scheme for their livelihood.

“You were sent 20 links on e-mail every day, and you had to click on them — easy work that would give you some extra income. It looked like a good opportunity to me,” Kushwala said over the phone. Except, that was not all. You had to create two ‘downlines’ — rope in two other people to invest in the scheme. Kushwala could bring in only one, so the scheme didn’t work for him in the end. And now he is extremely glad it didn’t, after what happened on February 2. The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) conducted a raid at the Ablaze Info Solutions’s headquarters in Noida and registered an FIR against the company’s founder, for allegedly running a ₹3,700-crore Ponzi scheme. The founder was Mittal. After servers were seized, the Social Trade website stopped working, and its members were left in the dark.

Nitish Garg, from Kotdwar (Uttarakhand), fresh out of college, had joined the scheme for the easy money. He too had heard wonderful things about Social Trade — a way to earn a lot of money by just clicking the like button on Facebook, something he was anyway doing as a pastime. Now he would be paid for it too. Members routinely boasted of 100-, 200-, 500 per cent return on investment within a year, and foreign trips for the star performers with the most number of ‘downlines’. Like in any pyramid scheme, it was a community of the highly motivated, who believed they could make it big. Garg joined on January 6 this year with an investment of ₹57,500, and his work began by January 9. “I had to hit 125 Likes on Facebook every day — not a big deal for people my age.”

About two weeks later, he received a payment of ₹1,629, way less than what he was expecting. “We were promised ₹5 per like, and a weekly payment. After accounting for their commission and taxes, it should have been about ₹543 every day, or ₹3,801 every week.”

On hearing the news of Mittal’s arrest, Garg tried to lodge an FIR at Kotdwar but was told to approach the Noida police instead, as the alleged crime was under investigation there.

Mittal had set up Ablaze Info Solutions in 2011 while still in college, operating under the domain name socialtrade.biz. It really kicked off in 2015. By the time of his arrest in February 2016, nearly seven lakh people were involved with the company. His arrest came after members registered FIRs over non-payment of dues at two police stations in Noida. He is currently under custody after his bail plea was rejected multiple times. According to the UP STF and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) who are investigating the case, his wife and father are also involved as directors of his company.

Both the investigative bodies are yet to submit their reports to the court, but as more information comes out, this looks increasingly like a money circulation scheme. Essentially Social Trade would send its customers each other’s social media pages — personal or business-related — for their ‘Likes’, there were no third party clients. Those who joined the scheme would see the popularity of their social media pages increase with the rise in the number of ‘Likes’.

The company offered customers four models to choose from. The highest plan involved an investment of ₹57,500. If customers clicked on the 125 links that were shared with them each day, they were promised more than double the returns within a year at ₹1,25,000. If they additionally managed to get two more people to join under them, a bonus awaited them, and so on for more members.

Jaspal Bisht from Delhi is an ‘associate’ member (Silver, Gold and Diamond are the other categories on offer) in the scheme. He is convinced that the company is honest, and that Mittal has been targeted by those resentful of his trailblazing success. “I bought four IDs since September 2016 and had good results over the past few months. I don’t believe it is a Ponzi scheme. Nearly ₹3,000 crore has been returned to customers, and ₹650 crore has been seized by the ED. Mittal himself walked to the police station to explain the charges against him. The FIR was lodged after payments were delayed by a couple of weeks, as the company was caught up with the launch of its new e-commerce site Intmaart. There is no cash involved, all payments were through account transfers. What about the service tax that the government took from them, did they once ask what the tax was on?”

Bisht is not alone in his support for Mittal. There have been several protests at Jantar Mantar at which Social Trade members shouted slogans against the arrest of Mittal. These members even insist that Mittal wanted to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, with a social networking site to rival Facebook. These claims are not imagined, Mittal himself said he wanted to launch a social networking site in a recent video. His Intmaart aimed to take on the big league of e-commerce sites. There are recent media images of him living big: one shows him celebrating with Sunny Leone and Ameesha Patel at the launch of Ìntmaart at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Greater Noida.

The STF has also arrested a Yes Bank official who was Mittal’s personal fund manager.

In hindsight, Garg is thankful he did not succeed in roping in more people to the scheme. “I wasn’t sure of the business yet. So I wanted to make sure before getting more people to invest.” Yet, he also knows people who made fantastic sums in just a year, and is not surprised that they are now defending the company. “I knew people who got returns of ₹10 lakh, taking advantage of the various booster schemes... those who have profited will defend the company lest they have to return the ill-gotten money. However, for those of us who joined later, the truth is that we got scammed.”

Mittal’s social media marketing business is clearly not a sustainable model, if you do the math. According to Gaurav Sharma, fintech and banking consultant, click farming is not profitable enough to be sustainable. “Even in countries where wage is low, such as Bangladesh or Phillipines, the miniscule ad revenue from click farming can barely cover the cost of electricity required to run the computers, let alone turn a profit.” According to a story in The Guardian, click farmers charge as little as $15 (about ₹9,000) per 1,000 clicks, and the people they hire can earn just $120 (₹7,689) a year. Going by this rate, Ablaze Info Solutions’s rates appear inordinately high.

Direct-selling pyramid schemes are certainly not new in India. Shobhit Bhatnagar, CEO of an education-based company called gradeup, says, “Back in my engineering college in 2009, there was one by the name of eBIZ that promoted digital literacy and had a cult following, especially among students, even though the product was useless. At the motivational seminars they organised, members who had made money would be treated like rockstars. College students would lap it up, seeing it as an opportunity to prove themselves, and making India better.”

Meanwhile, Mittal’s followers have been persistent in their support. Facebook groups such as one called ‘Honest Anubhav Mittal: The Untold Story’ provides regular updates about the case. Many former members keep asking wistfully when Social Trade will be back in business. As Bisht explains, “There are many more such organisations, including the likes of Marcus Corporation or Addkranti or Fast News that people are joining now that Social Trade is not in business.”

Mittal’s father has been arrested and charged with cheating, forgery, use of forged documents, and criminal conspiracy. The company’s bank accounts have been seized since Mittal’s arrest. His case is pending in the district and sessions court in Lucknow, and the last hearing date is May 18 as we go to print. Many members are ready to believe that the government and media have been bought by the companies and other entities that are jealous of Social Trade’s success, and that their genius visionary is a victim, not a wrongdoer.

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