Pvt firm owner accused of duping several people of Rs 60 crore in house lease fraud

BENGALURU: People would do well to exercise caution when renting out a house or flat in city. A private company owner has allegedly cheated several people by posing as a broker and collecting crore of rupees as advance payment.

The accused is Vivek Keshavan, who owns Catena Homes India Private Limited, located in Electronics City, has allegedly cheated to the tune of over Rs 60 crore. He was doing brokerage through Catena and even had a website.

Vivek and the gang were renting houses from the owners. Later, they scammed those looking for houses on lease through the website. The gang was getting lakhs of rupees in the name of leasing houses. He used to pay house rent to the house owner for a couple of months. But he vanished overnight without paying the rent for the last six months.

This has left many house owners and tenants in a difficult situation, with some families struggling to cope with the loss of their homes and savings. He cheated many people in places including Marathahalli, Banaswadi, Amruthahalli, Electronics City and other areas. An FIR has been registered against him at the Electronics City police station, and the police are trying to track him down.

One of the tenants, Swapna, said, “We found the Catena Homes Pvt Lmtd website advertisement while searching online for flats available under lease. It was like a sub-lease business. Everything was fine for two years. Vivek Keshavan did not introduce the owner of our building as per the agreement. So there is no direct communication between us and the owner. He did not pay rent for the last six months. Now the actual owners are pressuring us to vacate the building. Let Keshavan return our money first, and we will leave. I gave Rs 19 lakh for lease”.