The sham has been on since May last year, when K K Chaturvedi, 60, returned from a five-year stint in the United States and opened his company, Newsline has learnt. The company — Life Business India —operated out of E-18, Mohan Cooperative, Badarpur.

Chaturvedi, police sources said on Saturday, made his three sons — Bhuvan, Rakesh and Mukesh, all in their twenties — the company’s directors.

The police raided the company’s premises on Friday evening and arrested Chaturvedi senior. Police sources said his sons are absconding.

Newsline has learnt that the Chaturvedis promoted their sham ‘software development company’ through several newspaper advertisements around May last year. The advertisements claimed to offer jobs to young software and IT professionals with a starting monthly salary of Rs 14,000, besides incentives.

In return, the aspirants had to deposit Rs 75,000 each.

“Around 3,000 youths deposited money in their firm to become trainees. The Chaturvedis must have collected over Rs 20 crore through this fraud,” a police source said.

Chaturvedi was a priest at Geeta Bhawan temple in Hauz Khas market till a few years ago, the source said. His grand idea, of opening the bogus IT and software company, came following his visit to the US — he went there with one of his ‘disciples’, the police source said.

According to police, the aspirants went to the company’s ‘official’ address after waiting in vain for a reply to their investments. This was December last year. Not getting a response there — Chaturvedi’s sons had by then gone into hiding for all practical purposes, and had stopped receiving phone calls — they lodged a complaint with Badarpur police. That was earlier this month.

The police swung into action and raided the family’s Hauz Khas residence. Finally, on Friday evening, K K Chaturvedi, the erstwhile priest, was arrested. He was produced before a court and sent to judicial custody. Police sources said his sons, who claim to have undergone IT training, are still on the run. The police have launched a hunt to nab them.

The Chaturvedis have been booked under IPC Sections 420 (cheating) and 406 (criminal breach of trust). The FIR (number 61) has been registered at Badarpur Police Station.