pune the swargate police are investigating a complaint lodged by some smalltime business persons from satara road and sinhagad road stating that they were duped of rs7218 lakh collectively by six persons on the promise of attractive returns on investment in 201819 the six suspects including two women hail from mumbai aurangabad among other places they hired an office premises in a commercial complex near mitra mandal chowk to operate their finance and investment business swargate police said a shopowner 36 of panmala on sinhagad road lodged a complaint with the police the suspects lured the victims in the name of high returns on deposits ranging from rs10 lakh to rs15 lakh for a specific term and accepted the same however the suspects folded up their activity and never returned the principle and interest on the money accepted so far six victims approached the police and the overall fraud amount was likely to go up the fir stated one of the two women posed as a widow of a businessman and claimed her husband had funds with several financial institutions she said that if the people would invest in her scheme she would also share the amount received from these funds with them police said suspects spread word among the locals urging them to invest people visited the office and gave cheques and cash to the suspectsthe investors were supposed to get their money and interest sum in december 2019 and early 2020 they visited the office and found it was locked one of the victims who operates a shop on satara road said the woman promised me an interest of 12 on my investment so i invested money after they won my confidence the suspects had given me a postdated cheque but it did not materialize it is a huge loss for me