Bhubaneswar, July 3: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today filed a preliminary charge sheet against three employees of Zodiac Foundation, a money deposit collection company, on charges of cheating investors.

The company is among the 44 such firms that are under the CBI scanner.

The 17-page charge sheet indicts three officials of the company - Dandapani Sethi, Gagan Bihari Behera and Subash Chandra Mahanta.

Sethi, who worked at the company's head office at Bhanjanagar in Ganjam, had allegedly collected more than Rs 1 crore from the investors under various schemes. The CBI sleuths had arrested him on May 8.

The charge sheet also mentioned that the trio had set up the office of the fraudulent firm at Rairangpur in Mayurbhanj and collected money from depositors promising them high returns.

The firm, which was founded in Balasore in 2011, had subsequently opened several branches in Mayurbhanj and in the southern areas of the state. The fraudulent company allegedly collected money from investors promising them double return in 20 months.

The investigating agency had also found that the firm had diverted the investors' money in the share market for quick returns.

The firm closed its operations in November 2013 after depositors sought police action after the company had failed to return their money.

Sources in the CBI said Behera and Mahanta had left the company in May 2012, but Sethi continued to work there and opened another branch office at Bhanjanagar in Ganjam.

In 2013, Mayurbhanj police had arrested Behera and Mahanta following a complaint lodged by the duped investors against the duo. Later, both were released on bail granted by a local court in Mayurbhanj.

In a related development, the court of special chief judicial magistrate, CBI, today rejected the bail plea of former BJD legislator Subarna Naik, who is in jail for his links with the money deposit collection company, Naba Diganta Capital Service Limited.

Naik, the former MLA of Keonjhar, applied for the bail after the central agency had filed its preliminary charge sheet in February.

In November last year, the CBI had arrested six functionaries of Naba Diganta, including Mayurbhanj MP Rama Chandra Hansdah, former BJP legislator Hitesh Bagarti and Naik.

The trio - Hansdah, Naik and Bagarti - had worked as the directors of the company from 2011 to 2013, a period during which the Ponzi firm flourished.

The company had allegedly acquired a share capital of Rs 100 crore by cheating nearly 20,000 people.

Though the company had allegedly swindled around Rs 100 crore from thousands of investors, the preliminary charge sheet mentioned the fraud worth Rs 8.39 crore.

The company had opened as many as 50 accounts in various nationalised banks at several locations across the state, including Berhampur and Bhubaneswar, and collected the money from investors by promising them attractive returns.