Events & Personalities
The Rs 27 crore fraud
On November 4, 2016, 28-year-old Mahzarin Jeejeebhoy and Ali Rizvi were remanded to custody by the metropolitan magistrate at the Esplanade Court for allegedly conspiring and making off with Rs 27 crore worth of funds, shares and securities belonging to Sheroo Cooper a few months before her death in January 2016. On November 5, 2016 The Times of India (TOI) reported that Cooper, an 84-year-old childless widow had left her estate to seven legatees in equal shares. It was when the executors of her will, through their solicitors M. S. Bodhanwalla and Company began to collect details of her estate that the fraud came to light. After Cooper’s death only about two crores were found in her account.
Cooper’s nephew Cushru Shroff, a chartered accountant and beneficiary, lodged a first information report (FIR) on October 15 with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) stating that Jeejeebhoy, an employee of his aunt’s chartered accountants and Rizvi, who posed as sub-broker of a firm had, along with some others, allegedly liquidated the shares through a demat account opened in his aunt’s name a few months prior to her death. The FIR listed offences of forgery, fraud, misappropriation, cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal piracy against five persons. The two main accused denied the charges and declared that Cooper herself operated the share trading account and had lost all her money.
Cooper, a resident of Jer Baug who gave tuitions to school children, had inherited the wealth from her husband who had left her his blue chip investments. Shroff told the EOW in his 16-page FIR that his aunt had never traded in shares since her husband died in 2001, so why would she suddenly do so at an advanced age, and that too in "futures and options trading” by transferring her investments to a new demat account with a share-broking firm, reported TOI. According to Shroff, "There was a conspiracy to defraud my aunt taking undue advantage of her age and infirmity.”
In her will, made in 2005, Cooper had asked for the bulk of her estate to be given in equal shares to her three nephews, a niece, an elder sister who expired in February 2016 aged 90, and two cousins, the TOI report stated.
Cooper’s nephew Cushru Shroff, a chartered accountant and beneficiary, lodged a first information report (FIR) on October 15 with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) stating that Jeejeebhoy, an employee of his aunt’s chartered accountants and Rizvi, who posed as sub-broker of a firm had, along with some others, allegedly liquidated the shares through a demat account opened in his aunt’s name a few months prior to her death. The FIR listed offences of forgery, fraud, misappropriation, cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal piracy against five persons. The two main accused denied the charges and declared that Cooper herself operated the share trading account and had lost all her money.
Cooper, a resident of Jer Baug who gave tuitions to school children, had inherited the wealth from her husband who had left her his blue chip investments. Shroff told the EOW in his 16-page FIR that his aunt had never traded in shares since her husband died in 2001, so why would she suddenly do so at an advanced age, and that too in "futures and options trading” by transferring her investments to a new demat account with a share-broking firm, reported TOI. According to Shroff, "There was a conspiracy to defraud my aunt taking undue advantage of her age and infirmity.”
In her will, made in 2005, Cooper had asked for the bulk of her estate to be given in equal shares to her three nephews, a niece, an elder sister who expired in February 2016 aged 90, and two cousins, the TOI report stated.
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