A woman from Kottur village in Pollachi has reportedly swindled 14.5 lakhs from her neighbours in a Ponzi scheme.

45-year-old Loganayagi had first told one of her neighbours about an investment plan through which she promised to double the amount of money which had been deposited, in a month’s time.

Initially, people gave her Rs 5000 which she then returned as Rs 10,000 within a month. Eventually, others in the village gave her larger sums of money to double the amount in a short time period. When they asked Loganayagi for receipts, she refused saying ‘income tax.’

When the villagers later approached her asking for the ‘maturity’ amount, she denied having collected money from them in the first place.

“We received complaints from around ten villagers saying that they’d given her money and didn’t get it back. She denied having collected any money at all. We arrested her and remanded her in judicial custody for 15 days in Coimbatore central jail. We are now in the process of collecting evidence that she collected money from the villagers. After that, we will decide on an appropriate course of action,” said Kottur police station SI, Rajendra Prasad.