86 BPO firms duped by Malaysian company
Buisness Standard - Nagpur May 17, 2006

Eighty six business process outsourcing (BPO) service providers are believed to have been cheated of crores of rupees by a Malaysian company.

A Malaysian marketing firm working on behalf of the BPO parent firm
confirmed that a fraud had been detected and directors of the company involved had been detained by the police.


Malaysia-based MTS Allstream Enterprises, projected itself as a unit of Canada-headquartered MTS Allstream, offered lucrative BPO contracts and demanded thousands of dollars for registration of name and legal charges before entering into a formal agreement. Its directors absconded after collecting the money from these eighty six companies.

The deals were arranged through marketing agents of MTS Allstream
Enterprises. Nagpur-based Web Research Services also figures in the list of those who lost thousands of dollars to the fraud. In the case of Web Research Services, Malaysian company, Ark Mind acted as MTS Allstream's representative and helped the companies establish contact.

Ark Mind also arranged deals for 85 other firms in the country and two in Bangladesh. Around five marketing firms were appointed by Allstream which means hundreds of other BPO companies in the country must have landed the "hot deal" and shelled out thousands of dollars as charges to Allstream, confirmed an official of Ark Mind.


The Malaysia-based ARK Mind is run by Veerappan Raman, a Malaysian national of Indian origin. ARK Mind has allegedly been duped by
Allstream and has filed a complaint against the company in Malaysia as well as Chennai.


Web Research Services' promoter, Siddharth Samel, who lost over $ 3000 paid upfront to Allstream at Malaysia, was sent a copy of a complaint that Ark Mind had reportedly filed with the Klang Police Station in Malaysia.

Samel said the total loss incurred by him was over Rs 8 lakh including cost of infrastructure set up here and the expenditure involved in making an emergency business trip to Malaysia for confirming the contract.