KARACHI: A social media influencer and businesswoman from Karachi is accused of defrauding hundreds of people—mostly women—of about Rs420 million by operating a monthly ballot committee system, an age-old practice of interest-free savings and money-pooling known as BC or committees, without maintaining any written records of depositors/contributors, resulting in the scheme’s total fraud.
Sidra Humaid, the owner of the start-up handicraft company Croise and the home-based food company Daily Bites, is accused of defrauding hundreds of her depositors by announcing on social media that she had “no means to pay off her committees” to around 200 contributors leaving them in utter disbelief.
Since last week, stories of victims of what many have referred to as a Ponzi scheme have taken over social media. To take action against Ms Humaid, many victims reached out to one another and created WhatsApp groups.
However, it appears no one has approached police or the Federal Investigation Agency against Ms Humaid so far in a bid to resolve the issue on their own.
On her part, Ms Humaid, whose whereabouts are not known, posted on social media: “Please guys don’t panic. Your money will be returned in the coming months.”
One of the victims was quoted as saying in Daily Dawn that Ms Humaid had pulled off the ‘scam’ of around Rs150m to Rs200m.
Sana Adnan, who lost Rs150,000, said most of the people knew Ms Humaid for the past seven to 10 years. “I joined two of her Committees. I was paying her Rs50,000 per month in one committee while in a 20-month committee, I was paying Rs25,000,” she said.
“Under the conventional system, each month, one member of the committee is paid the total amount. But, we found out that every month some ‘ghost’ member or someone in ‘her family’ is paid the total amount while we, all the members, kept paying the monthly committee throughout all months. It turned out that all the money was actually going to Ms Humaid herself,” she added.
