Sanchayita Chit Fund Scam was a major financial scam caused by the collapse of a

Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of s ...

. The scam was unearthed in 1980 and it affected over 1.31 lakh (0.131 million) people in

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. Two main promoters of the Sanchayita group, Shambhu Prasad Mukherjee and Swapan Guha, were arrested. Shambhu Mukherjee leaped or was pushed to his death from a multi-storeyed building in Calcutta (the murder theory still holds sway in Calcutta although the police claim that he committed suicide). Swapan Guha was declared insolvent by the court. Another accused Bihari Lal Murarka, the third promoter, went underground and has not been traced since.

References

Confidence tricks Financial scandals Fraud in India {{India-econ-stub